


Tap Tap Tap

by LemmingDancer



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Bottom Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Cognitive Dissonance, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feral Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Kaer Morhen, Like Glacial Slow, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Minor Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Rough Sex, Slow Burn, Top Drop, Top Eskel (The Witcher), feelings with porn, sex as a coping mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:22:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 45,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27637459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemmingDancer/pseuds/LemmingDancer
Summary: Eskel had one true love in his long life, an auburn-haired boy who died screaming during experimental witcher trials. Geralt, on the other hand, had many true loves, a great many for a man who was supposed to be more cut off from his emotions than even the average witcher. Perhaps that should have been Eskel’s clue that he didn’t understand this love thing at all.In which Eskel learns what love looks like from Geralt, of all people. And Geralt learns that a damaged heart can still love and be loved in return.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 539
Kudos: 379





	1. Change

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is that meme with the guy holding up the butterfly, where the guy is Geralt/Eskel asking ‘Is this love?’ It includes minor Jaskier/Geralt, and very minor Yennefer/Geralt. I wrote it to explore how much of Geralt's emotional flatness is due to mutations and how much is adaptive. And also because I love these two and had to write them into the same ending. 
> 
> The sexy bits start sweet and then get rougher in later chapters. I've tagged it as mildly dubious consent mostly due to these two noodles' inability to talk it out beforehand. I will include detailed CWs in the chapter notes. It is completely written (except for this tiny part I'm stuck on in Chapter 12, ugh). Will post updates every day or two as I finish edits.
> 
> CW Chap 1: Possibly underage sex between two consenting late teens. I picture them as 16 or 17ish.

Geralt came to Eskel with fever-bright eyes and restless energy burning just beneath his skin.

“Was starting to think you lost interest,” Eskel said as Geralt stripped and slid beneath the furs on Eskel’s narrow cot.

“I had to wait for it to quiet down. The halls were crawling with people, everyone’s getting ready to leave.” Geralt tangled their legs and clutched at Eskel’s back, sealing their naked chests together. The only still point on his body was his cold nose burning a brand against Eskel’s throat. His hands roamed over Eskel’s skin, the hair on their calves catching as he rubbed their legs together, his chest heaving as if he’d run the walls.

“Want it that bad, do you?” Eskel teased. He stroked a hand down Geralt’s flank to gentle the restless movement of the lithe frame in his arms.

Spring made them all jittery, even the trainees. Maybe it was the mutations, the animal instinct to emerge from hibernation overwhelming their dwindling humanity, or the winter-long buildup of energy from being trapped indoors. But it was probably just a matter of it finally being warm enough in their poorly heated rooms to risk getting naked together.

Geralt drew back enough to meet Eskel’s eyes, their faces a hand’s-breadth apart on the pillow. In the light of the room’s single candle Geralt’s hair was blood-red, a thick puddle of curls that framed his face. Eskel reached out and ran his fingers over the strands. Candles were rationed, but it was worth burning his last to see those curls spilling over his hands.

“It’ll be us someday,” Geralt whispered like a secret. “Us, leaving.”

“You for sure.” Eskel tried not to let any sourness color his tone. Despite being the most fragile trainee in their cohort, baby-faced and slim, Geralt had recovered fastest from the first trials.

Geralt shook his head silently.

“You will be the finest witcher Kaer Morhen has ever produced,” Eskel told him, knowing how much it mattered to Geralt. Too many nights spent reading histories and myths stollen from the keep’s library, Vesemir always said, but neither the lectures nor the canings had changed Geralt’s idealism. Nothing would. Spring followed winter, the sun rose in the east, and Geralt would be the best of them.

“If I live,” Geralt said.

Eskel’s brows shot up. It was unlike Geralt to doubt himself, especially now that the worst of the trials were over. Eskel leaned in and kissed Geralt, a chaste press of his lips for comfort.

Geralt gasped into the kiss, opening his mouth and turning it into something filthy. His restlessly moving body bucked against Eskel with new purpose as he rutted their hips together.

Eskel chuckled into his mouth. “There you are.”

“I’m here. I’m here,” Geralt repeated. His voice had an edge that scraped along Eskel’s nerves.

Eskel inhaled deeply, trying to scent Geralt as the other witchers did to read emotions. The wealth of information each breath brought was too chaotic for him to interpret; it was a language he’d only started to learn. 

Geralt pushed him onto his back and straddled his hips. Eskel swallowed a groan as their bodies slid against each other, slick with more than just sweat.

“What…?” Eskel asked, staring down at the shininess between them.

“I want you to fuck me.”

“Blech. I don’t want to hurt you.” They’d tried that once. It hadn’t been pleasant.

“Ptier begged Mikel to fuck him, they both seemed to enjoy it. I know what to do now.”

“What, you watched?” Eskel dragged his gaze up to Geralt’s face again. The spare light carved shadows into his cheeks, giving the planes of his face sharp new angles.

“They were so loud it was practically an invitation. Please Eskel?” Geralt pressed his palms flat on Eskel’s chest, fingers tapping on his collarbones. “I’ll be careful, it won’t hurt. I just—I want to feel you everywhere. Please?”

Eskel had never been good at saying no to Geralt, not when he roped Eskel into pranks, not when his acts of rebellion got them both beaten bloody, and especially not now, when he looked a Eskel with a fire in his golden eyes that matched the heat in Eskel’s groin.

“Ok. Ok, just—I want it to be good for you too, yeah?”

Geralt fell into Eskel, landing with his elbows on either side of Eskel’s head as he plunged his tongue into his mouth. He rutted their cocks together for a moment before leaning forward.

“Wait…” Eskel muttered into Geralt’s mouth as he felt himself pressed to Geralt’s entrance.

“Really? Now?” Geralt’s thighs quivered around Eskel’s hips.

“Said I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“I prepared myself.” The word ‘prepared’ had audible quotes around it.

“What?” Eskel asked, trying to swallow around his clumsy tongue.

“With my fingers and oil. Where did you think the oil came from?” Geralt pushed up onto his hands so he could glare down at Eskel.

“Sword oil?” Eskel asked with a leer.

“I swear to the gods if you make a joke about sheathing your sword in me, I will kill you.”

“No, you won’t.” He whacked Geralt’s thigh lightly. “That sounds…” he couldn’t decide if the thought of Geralt reaching around to finger himself sounded attractive or uncomfortable.

Geralt raised one eyebrow. Without breaking eye contact, he sank his hips and ground them against Eskel in the mess of oil. “Thought about you as I did it. What it’d feel like to get that giant cock of yours inside me.”

Eskel choked back a sound that definitely wasn’t a whimper.

“Which you could be, inside me, right now. Unless you have further objections?”

“By all means, proceed,” Eskel managed almost evenly.

Geralt reached around and guided Eskel towards himself. For a moment, the pressure was incredible, almost painful, then Eskel was just inside Geralt’s body. Geralt hissed.

“Geralt?” Eskel wavered. Geralt’s body was silky heat around him, like sinking into the scalding, mineral-soft water of the hot springs. Eskel never wanted to leave. But only if Geralt was there with him.

“I’m fine,” Geralt said, wriggling a little. Eskel hissed in turn. “You just gotta give me a minute.”

Slowly, sinking down and hitching up in tiny increments, Geralt lowered himself into Eskel’s lap. They both released simultaneous groans that echoed in the bare stone of the room when Geralt’s ass settled on Eskel’s hips.

Eskel clapped a hand over his own mouth.

“It doesn’t matter,” Geralt said through gritted teeth. “Make all the noise you want.”

Eskel’s objection was lost in another groan as Geralt began to move, his muscular thighs bunching beneath Eskel’s hands. The nervous energy was still there, crackling across his tight shoulders, shaking in the fingers he combed through Eskel’s chest hair.

Geralt shifted forward and back, changing the angle of his body. His face was screwed up in concentration, the same face he made when he cast signs, Eskel realized as his stomach gave a little lurch. He swallowed the urge to lean up and kiss the tip of Geralt’s nose; he liked his own nose as it was too much to risk Geralt breaking it.

“We don’t have to…” Eskel started, because Geralt looked more like he was steeling himself for a long practice session than someone lost in passion.

“Shut up. I think it’s just a matter of finding the right position. It seemed that way for Ptier anyway.”

“How long did you watch? That’s a flagrant disregard for privacy, Geralt. Vesemir would whip you bloody.” Eskel concentrated very hard on the thought of punishment to keep himself from losing control in the body clenched around his cock. He wasn’t going to last long.

“I’m not really—gods you’re big, shut up, don’t gloat—I’m not really in the mood for a lecture from Vesemir right now, Esk—” he cut himself off with a reedy whine.

“Good?” Eskel asked as Geralt’s face convulsed. Wetness that looked alarmingly like tears had gathered at the corners of his eyes.

In answer, Geralt threw his head back and began to ride Eskel steadily, hitting the same angle over and over, his breath hitching with every descent.

“I’m close,” Geralt whispered to the ceiling not much later. His hands had fallen away from Eskel’s skin to dangle at his sides.

Eskel’s stomach twisted almost painfully. The distance between them suddenly seemed unbearable, for all that they were joined as intimately as they’d ever been.

“Look at me, look at me Geralt,” Eskel ordered.

Geralt tilted his face down and blinked his eyes open. They’d been hazel when they were children, the gold-brown shot through with flecks of green, but Eskel found he didn’t miss the old color. Their eyes matched now.

Eskel reached up and cupped the side of Geralt’s head. He buried his fingers in the red curls, sinking his hand into the only color in this gray cell of a room, the only color in Eskel’s life. With his other hand, he pumped Geralt in time to his thrusts.

Geralt came with a cry, Eskel working him through it until he collapsed on Eskel’s chest. Eskel rolled them without pulling out, ignoring Geralt’s almost drunken chuckle as he was splayed out on his back. Eskel thrust into his pliant body a few more times before he came, smothering his yelp into the pillow beneath Geralt’s head.

Eskel floated in the afterglow of the most shattering orgasm of his life for a long time, just aware enough to hold his weight on his elbows and not collapse on Geralt beneath him. It was the trembling of the hair brushing the side of his face that brought him back to himself.

Still connected at the hips, he wrenched himself up. Geralt’s whole body was shaking, but Eskel honestly couldn’t tell from the grin twisting his tear-streaked face if he was laughing or sobbing.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. With a grimace, he finally pulled himself out of Geralt’s body.

Geralt winced.

“You said you’d be careful, that it wouldn’t hurt you,” Eskel said. He pushed at one of Geralt’s thighs to see how badly hurt he was, but Geralt stopped him by hauling him into a crushing kiss.

“You didn’t hurt me,” Geralt said. He pressed their foreheads together, cupping one hand around the back of Eskel’s neck.

“I didn’t say I had.” That’s what he meant, but. “You might have hurt yourself on my giant cock, though.”

Geralt snorted. His fingers twitched on Eskel’s skin. Eskel gave in to the urge and kissed the tip of his nose. He dodged Geralt’s lazy swipe and leaned over the side of the bed to retrieve an undershirt without moving from between Geralt’s legs. He scrubbed at the chests and cocks before swiping the cloth lower on Geralt.

Tears continued to stream from Geralt’s eyes, and the feral grin was gone.

“Starting to think my bedroom skills left something to be desired,” Eskel said.

“Yeah, well. I suppose you weren’t too bad, for your first time,” Geralt said, the teasing obscured by the tears in his voice. He sat up slowly, getting his knees beneath him until he knelt on the bed facing Eskel.

“Geralt?”

“You know me,” Geralt offered weakly.

Eskel shrugged. Geralt angered more quickly and laughed more readily than anyone else in the keep, but it had been a decade since Eskel had seen him cry.

“It’s just. This.” Geralt gestured to the space between them.

“Mind blowing sex?” Eskel deflected. They never named it, this thing they had with each other. To name it would make it real, make it breakable.

Geralt ignored him.

“This,” he said, tapping his index finger three times on Eskel’s chest, just above his heart.

It was not love. Kaer Morhen existed to break them down and build them back without words like love. Besides, Eskel had read them same stories as Geralt. In the myths and legends, love was unequaled passion and devotion to another, a power so strong it rivalled magic in its ability to change the course of history. It could bring empires to their knees with a curse. It could save someone’s life with a kiss.

This was not that.

Geralt was still shaking. Eskel draped a fur over his shoulders. He focused on the freckled skin stretched tight over Geralt’s collarbones to avoid the enormity of the thing they could not name between them.

“Eskel. Promise me something?”

“Anything.” It was an easy promise to make. Geralt never asked for something Eskel couldn’t give. He forced himself to meet Geralt’s eyes. His tears were finally drying, but the feverish glow had only brightened.

“Promise me you’ll always remember.” Three more taps on his chest.

Eskel trapped Geralt’s hand with his own, pressing it flat onto his skin. “Remember what?” he whispered.

“This. Us. Me.” _Tap tap tap._

Witchers didn’t get scared. But they weren’t witchers yet, not really. Eskel swallowed hard. “Why?”

“Swear it, Eskel. Swear you’ll remember. You’ll never doubt this. Us.” Me _. Tap tap tap._

Eskel had never been good at telling Geralt no. “I swear it.”

They tangled themselves together again, twining around each other with Geralt sprawled on Eskel’s chest as they gave in to sleep.

Eskel lay awake holding Geralt long after he’d drifted off. Even in his sleep Geralt didn’t settle completely, his mobile face flipping through expressions like the pages of a book as he dreamt, his fingers flexing against Eskel’s chest and his legs shifting endlessly. Eskel stilled his own body, sinking into meditation as if he could drag Geralt with him into a more restful place. Eskel breathed, slowed his heartbeat, and cast his senses outward.

Geralt was a warm weight stretched over him, his heart beating slow and steady, strong enough Eskel could feel it vibrating where their chests pressed together. The scent of their coupling, lust and come and sweat, lingered in the room among a swirl of other scents Eskel could not identify. Beyond their shared space, Eskel could hear Aleksi stirring in his room down the hall, buckles jingling and clothes rustling as he packed. At the edge of his hearing, Eskel could just make out the gurgling of running water, snowmelt streaming around and under the keep as it surged down the mountainside.

For the first time in his life, Eskel let himself wonder what it might be like, to live forever. The numbers had never been in their favor and they still weren’t. Six of every ten trainees died before they got their medallions and half of the witchers who went onto the Path the first year never returned. He probably wouldn’t survive. Eskel never deluded himself; he never clung to false hope.

Geralt, of course, did just the opposite. He had plans, so many plans. Not dreams for how their lives would be; he was to be a witcher and witchers did not have dreams. But they did have strategies, plans, provisions. He planned to meet up with Eskel on the Path, they would travel together on and off, taking hard contracts as a team and then parting to seek work on their own. In the fall they would travel to Kaer Morhen to winter together. Spring would follow winter, the Path and Kaer Morhen in an endless round, Geralt and Eskel unchanging as empires rose and fell around them. When they were old enough, they’d seek positions on the council, Eskel would teach the trainees signs and Geralt would teach sword work.

It was a ridiculously ambitious plan. Only Geralt would have the audacity not only to believe it possible but to voice it aloud.

Eskel tightened his arm on Geralt’s back. His shoulder blade was a sharp edge beneath Eskel’s palm. He tapped his index finger on it three times. 

_This. Us. You._ Tap tap tap. _I swear it._

* * *

The clang of steel on steel still hurt Eskel’s newly sharpened hearing. He snarled at Clovis over their crossed blades.

“You should let Geralt handle _all_ your sword work, Eskel,” their fellow trainee leered, leaning his weight on his blade. Eskel shoved back into his space easily.

“You’re just upset no one wants to handle your sword,” Eskel said, before blasting Clovis to the edge of the practice yard. All the boys shared beds, Geralt and Eskel were no different really. They just only shared with each other.

It was the first day they had the yards to themselves since snow had shut them in the keep in the fall. Their winter chores of mending and potion brewing were finally done, the other witchers having taken the fruits of their labors back on the Path with them. Despite the gloomy grayness of the day, they celebrated the change by descending into a merry brawl.

A back thumped into his own. Eskel didn’t have to turn to know it was Geralt taking up his usual position. The other trainees formed up into a loose circle around the two of them with predatory grins.

“I’m not really sure how this became two against everyone else,” Geralt said, “But I wouldn’t put money on you lot.”

Slamming his hand downwards, Eskel cast another Aard, this one a rapidly expanding circle around himself and Geralt that staggered everyone else back a few steps. Mud squelched as Geralt darted forward to take advantage of the confusion. He dove between their foes, slapping the flat of his blade on body parts and disarming by turns.

Eskel couldn’t spare him much more than a glance, focusing on his own fight. Where Geralt was mobile and lithe, Eskel stood his ground using his strength and his signs. Geralt ebbed and flowed around him, spinning away to disrupt their attackers’ united front but always returning to cover Eskel’s blind spots.

From the edge of the practice yard, Swordmaster Varin cleared his throat. “Supposed to be repairing the wall,” he said.

The trainees paused long enough to glance back and forth between him and the scaffolding supporting the inner wall. They may have survived the first trials, earning themselves their cat eyes and animal grace, but Varin could and did whip them for misbehavior still.

“Bah,” Varin concluded with an indulgent wave. He wandered over to where Vesemir and Rennes were having a hushed discussion with two of the mages. Eskel swallowed his sudden uneasiness. The mages always meant pain for the trainees.

Geralt jerked Eskel out of the way of one of Clovis’s wild thrusts and Eskel returned his concentration to the swords swinging around them. But his momentary lapse had put them on the defense and they gave ground to the other trainees as they struggled to regain the upper hand.

With a cry of satisfaction, Clovis blasted Geralt with Aard, catching him so off-guard he didn’t have time to even brace. He flew backwards through the scaffolding until he hit the wall behind it, leaving a path of destruction in his wake.

The remaining supports creaked ominously.

“Geralt, get your ass out of there,” Eskel yelled.

Geralt staggered to his feet, still disoriented. Above him two of the stones atop the wall gave way with a grinding lurch.

“No!” Eskel cast without thinking, throwing Quen like he would Aard. A glimmer of gold darted from his fingertips just as the stones came crashing down on Geralt in a cascade of dust and rubble.

Someone was shaking Eskel’s shoulder. “Drop the Quen boy, before you bash your brains to bits against your own skull,” Rennes said in Eskel’s ear.

Eskel held tight to his mental image of the golden shield around Geralt. It hurt, but Eskel was used to pain. 

The gentle breeze in the yard slowly pushed aside the dust hanging in the air.

Geralt was standing completely unharmed in circle of bare earth, surrounded by chest-high rubble. The faint golden sphere of Quen around him was just visible in the gray light.

“Come boy,” Vesemir said, waving at Geralt until he stumbled up and over the stones.

Eskel dropped the Quen. The taste of copper was thick in his mouth. When he raised his hand to swipe at his itchy nose, it came away bloody.

“How?” one of the mages asked. “That should be impossible. Quen is a spell of protection for self, and self alone.”

Eskel blinked blearily at him. The mages exchanged a glance that made Eskel’s heartrate jump. A new scent filled the courtyard, sharp and acrid. 

_Fear_ , he realized. _I can smell fear._

Geralt stepped up to Eskel’s side and raised his chin. He stood close, closer than they usually stood outside their own rooms. Eskel resisted the urge to lean into him.

Rennes cleared his throat. “Your point is proved,” he said to the leading mage. The man responded with a grin every bit as wolfish as a witcher’s.

“You boy, come with me,” he ordered.

Straightening, Eskel took a wavering step towards the keep. A hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“He means me, brother,” Geralt said. His expression had gone completely blank, an emptiness that sat unnaturally on his open face. He did not seem surprised. 

“Yes yes, come come,” the mage said. “We’ve wasted enough time debating this. Bring the others.”

Rennes pursed his lips and pointed at three of the other boys and gestured for them to follow.

Geralt’s grip on Eskel’s shoulder tightened. He tapped his index finger three times on Eskel’s pauldron.

_Tap tap tap._

Then he followed the other boys and the mages away from the practice yards. Eskel’s last glimpse of him was his mop of fiery hair, an incongruous flash of color quickly swallowed by the shadows of the keep.


	2. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Against the odds, Geralt wakes up after the experimental trials.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: mild body horror, disassociation 
> 
> Short chapter today! I'm furiously making up witcher canon here, forgive me.

“Come on, Geralt please.”

_Eskel._

_No no no. Geralt can’t be with Eskel._

“Please Geralt, you have to let me prop you up. You’re choking…” A sound like hiccupping sob.

“What’s this, boy?” Vesemir’s voice in the blinding darkness.

_“You know why the mages want you, boy?”_

_“Yes, Master Vesemir. Because I did so well during the first trials.”_

_“That’s not why, though gods willing, it will be enough to keep you alive.”_

Geralt is drowning. He’s lying in his own bed and he’s drowning, gasping like the fish Eskel accidentally blasted from the shallows with Aard last time they sparred in the summer sun beside the lake.

_“Here’s the truth, boy. Witchers walk the Path alone. You and Eskel are too close, it will kill you both if we let it.”_

_“I don’t understand.”_

_“Eskel’s signs are strong. He’s strong. He will survive without you.”_

The world is new again. It’s midnight on a moonless night and Geralt could have read by the light of their narrow window.

Eskel is the same though. He’s clutching Geralt, trying to hold onto him.

He can’t. Geralt can’t let him.

_“They’re going to come for you boy, any day now.”_

_He’s crying, frustrated tears. Scared tears. “Why are you telling me this?”_

_“Because you will survive. And if you want Eskel to survive too you must remember what I tell you now: you cannot have him. You cannot want him. You cannot care about him.”_

Geralt tries to twitch away, but Eskel’s hands are on him, petting, soothing him as he drowns. It hurts, a thousand needle-point pin pricks along his skin beneath Eskel’s palms, pressure like an iron band around his chest where he lies in Eskel’s arms. Eskel raises his hand to Geralt’s head, runs his fingers through Geralt’s sweaty hair. Geralt jerks at the pain in his scalp.

“Oh gods.”

Geralt’s head bounces when he is dropped. His face rolls towards the center of the room, towards Eskel’s cringing form. There are clumps of red on the pillow beside his nose.

“Never mind the hair, boy. Let’s get him propped up.”

_His lungs burned. His face ached as if he’s taken a dozen direct hits to his cheekbones, to his nose. He’d choked on his own teeth when they fell out, pushed out by new, sharper teeth. There was blood in his mouth from where he’d bitten his own tongue with them._

_Voices spoke through the pain, voices made of pain. Geralt pulled weakly at the shackles around his wrists, just to feel a different kind of pain from the one in his chest._

_“The boy still lives?”_

_“His voice is shattered, and the lungs don’t sound much better.”_

_“It doesn’t matter. Did we succeed?”_

Geralt is slumped against the cool stone of the wall beside his bed, Vesemir’s hand on his shoulder keeping him upright. He blinks down at his own bony, concave chest.

“I can’t, Master Vesemir,” Eskel says. “I can’t do this anymore. He fights me, doesn't want me to touch him.”

“No one asked you to help, boy.”

“Why?” Eskel demands. “Why did you do this to him?”

_A flash of pain on his swollen cheek. “Boy, stay awake. I have a question.”_

_It was always the same question._

_“The other trainee boys, that Eskel, how do you feel about them?”_

_He’d given the same answer a dozen, a hundred times now._

“You know why, Eskel,” Vesemir answers. “Say it.”

“To make us stronger, to prepare us to walk the Path,” Eskel spits the words. “But he was strong, stronger than me.”

“In his way,” Vesemir says. “What we do, we do for your own good, boy. Remember that.”

“What?”

“We’re sending you to Barn Ard to strengthen your control over the chaos in your blood. With your signs and your strength, you might be the best witcher ever to come out of Kaer Morhen.”

“No! I can’t leave, not now.”

“You can and you will. There’s nothing for you here. He won’t survive the week.”

Geralt sucks in another gurgling breath and lets it out speckled with blood.

“Geralt, do you want me to stay?” Eskel drops to his knees, so Geralt doesn’t even have to raise his eyes to meet Eskel’s. "Do you want me here?"

_“I asked you a question, boy. Do you fancy yourself in love? Do you care about him?”_

_The mages always asked the same question._

He always answers the same way, mouthing the words with cracked and swollen lips. “Don’t. Care.”

_Vesemir said Geralt couldn’t care about Eskel, not if he wanted Eskel to survive. So Geralt lied. He lied and lied and lied._

_They never believed him._

_He lied until it became true, until he didn’t care if he died, he didn’t care if Eskel died, if it meant an end to this pain._

_They believed him then, but it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore._

Eskel is gone. That is good. Geralt can’t remember why; he doesn’t care why. He can’t.

“Good lad,” Vesemir says, ducking his head to meet Geralt’s eyes with an encouraging smile. Geralt stares at him unblinking, until Vesemir’s expression slides backwards into something else. “Lad?” He sounds worried.

Geralt doesn’t care about that either.


	3. Prodigal son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eskel returns from Ban Ard, thinking Geralt died while he was away. He's not entirely wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: mild body horror, bullying
> 
> I am totally making up canon here, if that's not obvious, ha. I know almost nothing about the other witcher trainees and the details of the trials are pretty fuzzy. 
> 
> Thanks for the comments and kudos!! I cherish every one; they make it so much more fun to post.

Geralt was dead.

Eskel knew that when he stepped through the portal to Ban Ard, leaving Geralt’s twitching and gurgling body behind in their room.

Eskel had lived with that knowledge every moment of every day for the year he’d been away: Geralt had pushed Eskel away and chosen to die alone. It was a broken bone unset, the ends grinding together with every movement. Sitting elbow to elbow with silk-clad sorcerer’s apprentices, practicing his sword forms alone in his room, squinting at the elaborate script of another spell; the pain never left him. Sometimes when he was truly exhausted, he forgot why it hurt. But it never stopped hurting.

Geralt was dead. Eskel knew that. But his first morning back at Kaer Morhen, when he scanned the faces of the trainees in the practice yard, he still looked for that wide smile, that flash of auburn hair. His stomach still plummeted when he didn’t see them.

“The dragon of Kaer Morhen returns!” Varin said, with more than a little sarcasm. “And he’s in fine fighting form.”

A few of the young men sniggered. Even with the addition of one or two strangers, there were less of them now, their faces harder and leaner than Eskel remembered. Eskel, by contrast, had been fed like a prized pet in a menagerie at Ban Ard. He’d grown into the bulky body promised by his large-boned frame and had put on a bit more around his middle as well.

“Can’t expect mages to have kept him on a training schedule,” Vesemir said.

“His signs should compensate for it, let’s see how he does against our best.” Rennes said. He shoved Eskel into the empty space at the center of the circle of trainees. They took several steps back.

Eskel looked at Clovis. He’d been the best swordsman after Geralt, but he only shook his head. One of the young men Eskel didn’t recognize pushed forward from the very back of the crowd.

The stranger had drowned dead coloring, bone-pale hair hanging limp around an empty, angular face. His gray skin was stretched so tightly over his cheekbones it was nearly translucent. Even for a witcher, he was odd looking.

“You got a name?” Eskel asked as he shook out his shoulders and took up a fighting stance.

The young man’s head tilted slightly to the side as he stared at Eskel. He didn’t answer. He didn’t even blink.

The circle of trainees around them shifted and murmured.

“To first blood,” Varin said.

Vesemir cleared his throat. “Don’t kill him, Geralt.”

Eskel nearly dropped his sword. “Geralt?”

He looked closer at the silent, white-haired witcher trainee, scanning his cheeks and the bridge of his nose for freckles, searching for the sparkle of mischief in his eyes or the grin that lurked constantly around the corners of Geralt’s mouth. But there was nothing. This man was taller, wider. His complexion was wrong, his jaw was too sharp. His eyes were too empty.

“I thought you died,” Eskel told the white-haired witcher with Geralt’s name.

The other trainee blinked once.

“Eh, pretty much,” Clovis muttered under his breath. There were sounds of vague agreement from the rest of the trainees.

“Quiet, the lot of you,” Vesemir said. “Geralt. I said don’t kill him. You understand me, boy?”

The white-haired witcher’s eyes flashed to Vesemir, ticked around his face, and then back to Eskel. He dipped his chin in the barest of nods.

“Enough of this,” Varin said. “Fight!”

Eskel jerked his sword into position just in time to catch his opponent’s first swing.

It only got worse from there. Eskel stumbled from move to move, lurching through forms while the white-haired witcher flowed around the practice yard like water, telegraphing his attacks with smooth, exaggerated movements. When Eskel shifted his weight and threw more strength into his attacks, the other man met him blow for blow despite his leaner frame.

Eskel began to pant harshly, punctuating his strikes with grunts of effort. The white-haired witcher wasn’t even winded. With a tiny twist of his torso, he dodged a blow that would have cleaved his arm off if it had landed, letting Eskel’s blade ruffle his hair as it passed.

Varin laughed. “You’ll never beat Geralt by the sword alone, magic fingers.”

This creature with his best friend’s name was taunting him.

Eskel snarled and blasted him with Aard. The other trainee flew backward through the air, limbs whipping like pennants with the force of Eskel’s casting.

When the dust settled, the white-haired witcher climbed to his feet, his shoulder visibly dislocated. Without breaking eye contact with Eskel, he yanked down on his injured arm, setting his own shoulder with a pop. He hissed, revealing fang-like teeth.

Eskel recoiled.

After that, the fight was a blur of vicious hits and unrestrained sorcery. The white-haired witcher cast a decent Quen, but it wouldn’t have matched Eskel’s Igni or Aard, if he had stood still long enough for Eskel to hit him. Casting Yrden to slow the other trainee’s foot work should have bought Eskel the edge he needed. Instead, it revealed how inhumanely fast the other witcher moved when unleashed. The young man danced around him, slapping him with the flat of his blade whenever Eskel failed to blast him back or duck around him. Their skillsets were unbalanced, so poorly matched they were only nominally fighting the same fight.

Vesemir and Varin called an end to it by stepping between them. Both instructors faced the white-haired witcher with swords drawn, letting Eskel stagger to a stop at their backs. He panted, rolling out a twisted ankle and wiping the sweat from his brow.

The other trainee stood down, still hissing around his needle-sharp teeth. He held himself with his injured arm tucked close. Blood trickled from his lips, a bright splash of red in his colorless face.

“Run it off, boy,” Vesemir ordered.

With one last snarl at Eskel, the white-haired trainee dropped his sword and skittered away. He climbed the rough-hewn blocks of the wall behind them like a spider and darted across the top. Even his movements were foreign, unnatural.

“What the fuck,” Eskel said.

Clovis snorted. “Yeah.”

“Eskel, your signs have improved,” Rennes said. “But your sword work is abysmal. You’ll train with Geralt, swords only for now.”

“For now?” Vesemir asked.

“Until Geralt actively tries to kill him,” Rennes responded. He frowned at the top of the wall where Geralt had disappeared.

Eskel swallowed hard. Geralt would never try to kill Eskel, not his Geralt.

“The mages overshot with that one,” Varin said. “It fights better than the rest, but it’s not fit to walk the Path.”

“He’s still changing,” Vesemir argued. “We give them years to grow into the other mutations.”

“The humans will kill him for his strangeness,” Rennes said, putting one hand on Vesemir shoulder. “Or he’ll kill humans for whatever reason he does anything. It would be cruelty, to let it come to that.”

“Go to lunch, boy,” Varin ordered Eskel. Eskel scrambled away before he could hear anything else.

* * *

Geralt did not appear at lunch, nor at their alchemy lessons that afternoon. Eskel waited until the ancient witcher supervising them fell asleep to question the other trainees.

“So, how come he gets out of lessons?” Eskel asked.

“Who?” Aubrey said, without looking up from his notes.

“G-geralt,” Eskel said. It hurt to say his name. He waved his hand at the room around them. “The only one of us not here.”

“That thing is not one of us,” Clovis said. “Madder than a barrel of baby basilisks, it is. Not even sure it can speak, let alone read.”

“He can read,” Aubrey said, “And write too. Caught him in the library past midnight last week, scribbling in an alchemy journal, same as any us.”

“Bah,” Clovis said. “It keeps itself to itself, and that’s how we like it. It’s a monster among freaks.”

“Geralt broke Clovis’s arm,” Aubrey said in a stage whisper to Eskel. “The first day he came back to training.”

“That bastard is fast.” Clovis elbowed Eskel’s side. “Don’t have to tell you that, though.”

Eskel shook his head and forced a smile. After his sparring session with Geralt this morning, the other trainees had welcomed him back into the fold as if he’d never left. His year living as an outsider amongst the mages had made him hungry for this easy camaraderie.

“Anyway. That freak grabbed my elbow to disarm me, twisted, and kept going until my arm broke in half a dozen places. I was out for a month, could have lost my sword arm.”

They all shuddered at the thought.

“Got the bastard back for it, though,” Clovis said. He stirred his pot viciously, splashing toxic liquid over the side.

Several boys looked away, unwilling to meet Eskel’s eyes.

“We all had trouble controlling our strength at first,” Eskel observed to the mess of bubbling liquid in his cook pot. “He could have maimed or killed me several times over this morning. And he didn’t. He never even tried to overpower me.”

Aubrey tapped the tip of his quill against his chin contemplatively. “You’re you, though. The two of you always had something different from the rest of us.”

Eskel remembered the white-haired trainee’s dead eyes, his blank indifference that devolved into feral spitting. “I’m me. But is he Geralt, really?”

The other trainees shifted uncomfortably and turned back to their tasks. No one felt much like talking anymore.

* * *

Kaer Morhen’s kitchens produced simple peasant fare, but it had never tasted better than that night at dinner. Most of Eskel’s joy in the meal came from being home, sandwiched thigh to thigh with his brothers as they wrestled for control over the serving platters. It couldn’t have been more different from Ban Ard, where Eskel had taken his meals alone in his cell of a room.

Geralt showed up halfway through dinner. The shoulders of the other trainees tightened as he approached, but he didn’t try to take a place on one of the benches. He snatched a few meat-stuffed rolls and a handful of dripping pork, dodged a crippling kick Clovis aimed at his knee with ease, and disappeared into a dark corner of the hall.

“He takes his dinner off into the shadows to eat like a feral animal with a fresh kill,” Clovis said.

Or like someone who had been ambushed one too many times when he was vulnerable. Eskel swallowed that response with a gulp of his ale. He kept his thoughts to himself and his mouth shut while the other boys talked.

“What was it like, the sorcerer’s keep?” Aubry asked Eskel during a lull in the conversation.

Eskel said the first word that came to mind. “Cold.”

“Colder than Kaer Morhen? Unlikely.” The trainees scoffed at the thought, elbowing each other.

“It was—sweet Melitele!” Eskel clutched his chest in surprise.

Geralt had appeared at Eskel’s elbow while he was distracted and was now flinching back from his surprised exclamation. When Eskel just stared at him, Geralt repeated his earlier snatch and grab from the tabletop and slinked away into the shadows again.

“It’s like having some sort of half-domesticated wolf in the dining hall,” Eskel said, smoothing out the wrinkles he’d put in his own shirt.

Clovis shrugged. “Goes easier if you keep it in its place.” He raised a clenched fist in the direction of Geralt’s retreat.

“So Ban Ard was colder than Kaer Morhen?” Aubrey asked.

“It was a different sort of cold.” Eskel had thought so at the time anyway. Now he wasn’t so sure.

If he squinted, he could just make out the outline of Geralt’s form, crouched in the corner of the hall, as far from the light and the heat of the room as he could get.

* * *

Geralt didn’t try to kill him the next day during training. Quite the opposite, in fact. He led Eskel through each move slowly, correcting his stance with sharp pokes of his index finger to the offending body part. He matched Eskel’s intensity, allowing him to put too much strength behind each blow, but forcing them to move at a deliberate, troll-slow pace. His control never wavered.

Frustrated with the pace and his own shaking arms, Eskel twisted to the side and slammed his fist into Geralt’s kidney in an underhanded attempt to disarm him.

Geralt huffed a little breath in what could have been surprise. Or pain.

Eskel’s frustration dissolved in a wave of self-recrimination. Geralt was the most patient instructor he’d ever had, if you could call his blank impassivity patience, and Eskel responded by hurting him. This man didn’t deserve to be punished for not being the person Eskel once knew. None of them survived the trials unchanged.

Geralt had stepped away from Eskel without making any move to retaliate. He raised his sword and waited for Eskel to get back into his position.

Eskel glanced around. The other trainees and the instructors had moved to the top of the wall to spar along the crenellations, leaving Geralt and Eskel behind in the courtyard. It was the first time they’d been alone together in over a year.

“I’m sorry,” Eskel said, lowering his sword. “For punching you. And yesterday. I was an asshole.”

The tip of Geralt’s sword dipped; the only indication he’d heard Eskel.

“I was frustrated with myself and surprised—” Eskel cut off that train of thought. Yesterday’s emotional swings, from believing Geralt dead to finding out he was alive but had become this broken creature, he couldn’t think about it. “Anyway. You know how it is. I’m sorry.”

Geralt shook his head once, hard, like a horse shaking off a fly.

Eskel frowned at him. “You don’t forgive me, or you don’t know how it is?”

Darting a glance up at their instructors on the wall, Geralt shrugged.

“Or I don’t need to apologize?” Eskel guessed.

Geralt raised his sword again.

“Ok then. Good talk.” Eskel swallowed a groan and forced his aching arms to raise his sword.

* * *

Dinner that night was a repeat of the night before. The trainees sat shoulder to shoulder, laughing and jabbing each other’s ribs while they told dirty jokes. Geralt appeared to snatch a few handfuls of food, dodging punches and kicks before disappearing into the shadows.

Eskel followed his progress across the hall, then glanced at the instructors’ table. Varin was shaking his head while Vesemir and Rennes argued quietly. All three stared into the darkness where Geralt had hidden himself.

They were going to kill him. They had tortured him into this twisted shape, and now they were going to kill him for it. Geralt, this Geralt who led Eskel through sword forms patiently and hid from the cruelty of his peers instead of lashing out, didn’t deserve to die.

The next time Geralt approached the table and reached over Eskel’s shoulder to grab another meager portion of the food, Eskel caught his elbow.

“Eskel, no!” Aubrey said, as if he’d grabbed a poisonous snake by the tail.

It was more like latching onto a statue. Geralt went still as an earth elemental beside him, one shoulder hitched up to protect his jaw from an incoming blow.

“Come now, Wolf,” Eskel said. “Why don’t you stop circling us and sit down?”

Geralt showed Eskel his teeth, not hissing or snarling, just peeling back his lips to expose his fangs in answer to Eskel’s question.

Eskel’s stomach dropped. Geralt was hiding in the dark, starving, because of his teeth. He cleared his throat. “You intend to do something with those? Besides eat?”

Geralt’s eyes jumped around the table before returning to Eskel. He shook his head, the motion setting his hair swinging around his ears.

“Then sit down.” Eskel tugged on his elbow a little harder.

Geralt looked up the hall to the instructors, who were silently watching the drama unfolding at the trainee’s table. Vesemir’s lips twitched up on one side, a tiny half smile you’d need enhanced senses to see. He tipped his head to Geralt, who promptly folded himself onto the bench beside Eskel.

Everyone at the table stared at them. Geralt stared at the empty plate Eskel tried to hand him.

“You need me to refresh your memory on silverware too, Wolf?” he asked, using the nickname again. It was easier than calling him by his given name.

Geralt took his plate and narrowed his eyes at Eskel.

“So, Aubrey,” Eskel said, ignoring Geralt, “Tell me about this new kind of bomb the Griffins have invented.”

Conversations resumed around the table. Geralt sat unmoving as a stone at Eskel’s side until the noise reached a normal level, letting the dialog flow around him without making any effort to follow it. He began to pull food towards himself with deliberate movements, clearly trying to move slowly enough to escape notice.

The table still fell silent when he bit into his roll.

Might as well address the wyvern in the room, then. “If you get close enough to use those,” Eskel said, pointing at his teeth, “You’re already in deep trouble. What are they even for?”

“Bloodying my own lips,” Geralt said in voice like a metal file across granite.

Eskel’s heartbeat was very loud in the new-fallen silence. He squinted at Geralt’s gray-sky face.

“Was that a joke?” he asked.

Geralt blinked at him. “Dead men don’t tell jokes.”

Eskel snorted. “It was! It was a joke. Maybe two jokes. I mean, they weren’t funny, but hey. Nobody hires a witcher for his sense of humor.”

Aubrey let out a strangled laugh and Clovis elbowed his side, hard. “Don’t encourage it.”

Geralt tilted his head at Clovis. “Didn’t mean to break your arm,” he said.

“Make no mistake, I sure as hell meant to hurt you,” he responded.

“I know.” Geralt bit into his roll again and went back to ignoring the conversation.

Eskel shook his head. Even this deadpan sarcastic humor was foreign and strange. It was starting to look like that there was nothing of the boy he’d known left in this feral wolf.


	4. Life after death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eskel's return ripples the surface of Geralt's deep stillness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: canon-typical injury, bullying, mild disassociation, mentions of past torture (the Trials are basically torture, right?)
> 
> This is draft SIX of this chapter. Six. Thanks for your kudos and comments! I absolutely love that folks are picking up what I'm putting down, one never knows!

When Geralt and Eskel were still boys, one of their cohort was thrown from his horse and hit his head. Vesemir eventually managed to revive him, but when he opened his mouth to speak, only garbled nonsense spilled out. He fell to his death running the killer a year later, having only just begun to relearn language.

Learning to live after the experimental mutations was much the same.

Half of Geralt’s world became newly crisp; every sense refined to blade-edge sharpness. The other half went cold and dead like a limb too long cut off from blood flow.

He felt nothing when he broke Clovis’s arm in training. He hadn’t meant to twist so hard, but he wasn’t sorry that he had. The sensations of the bone snapping and muscles tearing beneath his hand were interesting, that was all.

He felt nothing when the trainees systematically broke half his ribs with a steel bar in retaliation. The pop of each bone shattering was just as interesting from the other side. It hurt his body, but his body constantly hurt, cycling through periods of puffy inflammation and skeletal emaciation as it remade itself.

He felt nothing lying on his side staring at Eskel’s empty bed. He only moved to an abandoned wing of the barracks because it was quieter.

Geralt knew he was different even from his fellow witchers in this complete cauterization of his emotions. But he could not fear what was happening to him any more than he could be hurt by the increasing hostility of his peers.

* * *

Eskel’s return rippled the surface of Geralt’s deep stillness.

Geralt’s sense of time had gone as strange as his other senses, an eternity passing between the start of a sword swing and the blow landing, days spent in meditation vanishing in an instant. But he knew a year had passed when he heard a portal open on the wall above the practice yard.

Eskel apologized to Geralt. Geralt couldn’t apologize to him, couldn’t even feel bad for the way he fought like a cornered animal. But he knew he should.

Eskel didn’t ambush him when he was naked just to see how much pain Geralt could withstand. He couldn’t feel grateful for that mercy. But he wished he could.

And Eskel brought him back to the dinner table. He gave Geralt an opportunity to fill the yawning pit inside with more than scraps and dregs. Geralt couldn’t love him for that. He knew he couldn’t. But surely it would be ok to sit at the table next to him?

Geralt glanced up the hall to Master Vesemir.

Vesemir nodded once. Geralt collapsed onto the bench beside Eskel like his legs would no longer hold him up and held his breath until everyone forgot he was there.

Even when they remembered, Eskel made it better.

* * *

Rennes demanded a demonstration of what Eskel had learned from the mages at Ban Ard. They gathered in a wide field below the keep, the teachers and trainees standing well back from Eskel, and Geralt yet further back from them all.

Eskel summoned a gout of Igni that filled the field, turning the air into molten fire. He cast Yrden traps that slowed movement and shot electrical current through anyone trapped inside the glowing purple runes. His Aard felled a patch of trees large enough to construct a mid-sized town.

“You’ve learned something, I see,” Rennes said. “How about Quen, you ever figure out how to cast it on others?”

“Haven’t tried,” Eskel said, blowing his dark fringe out of his eyes.

“Try. Cast Quen on Vesemir.”

Eskel’s face puckered in concentration. He threw his hand out, a golden sparkle flitting away from his fingertips.

Varin punched Vesemir in the arm.

“Bastard,” Vesemir said, rubbing his bicep. “That’s a no then, Eskel.”

“Try it on Geralt,” Rennes said, gesturing Geralt forward. 

“We already know I can do that,” Eskel said, but Geralt detected a waver in his voice.

Eskel flicked his fingers at Geralt, throwing a gold shimmer at him.

Being inside Eskel’s Quen felt like a warm bath, a skin to skin embrace, summer sunshine on bare skin. Geralt remembered clearly how it felt, despite the hazy film of pain the experimental mutations had drawn across his early memories.

Now he only felt cold.

Geralt shook his head. He shifted his weight from foot to foot as his stomach clenched. Had one of the trainees poisoned his breakfast?

“What?” Eskel said. “No, hang on. I’m just tired.” Widening his stance, Eskel carefully shaped the sign with his hand. He threw the golden flicker at Geralt with a hiss of breath.

Nothing happened.

Wincing, Geralt put his hand on his abdomen. It felt like his stomach was trying to throw itself out of his body.

“What’s wrong with you, boy?” Varin asked Geralt.

“Did it work?” Rennes asked.

Geralt shook his head again and ground his teeth. Half a dozen cuts opened and closed inside his lips at the movement, filling his mouth with blood.

“Maybe Eskel just needs some incentive,” Clovis said. Lightning fast, he drew a dagger and drove it up towards Geralt’s heart.

“No!” Eskel shouted, throwing Quen at Geralt again.

Geralt felt the wave of magic pass over him, dissipating into the air. He watched Clovis’s dagger arcing towards his chest and wondered if it was worth dodging. He heard better than the average witcher; he knew the instructors planned to kill him. This would save Vesemir from having to wield the blade.

Eskel’s hand was still raised towards Geralt uselessly, his face frozen in horror.

Geralt twisted away from the blow. The blade sank deep into the meat of his shoulder instead of his chest.

“What the hell are you doing?” Vesemir asked, scrambling to tear a makeshift bandage from his own shirt with one hand while the other clamped down on Geralt’s wrist to keep him from reaching for his sword.

“Just experimenting a little,” Clovis said as blood bloomed over his hands. He hadn’t let go of the dagger.

“Hmm,” Geralt said. He kicked Clovis’s kneecap hard, the joint exploding like rotten fruit.

Clovis dropped with a howl, pulling the knife from Geralt’s shoulder as he fell. He clutched his knee and rolled in the dirt, screaming, “He’s crippled me!”

“You deserve that, you rotten little shit,” Varin told him.

The injured trainee’s eyes darted between Geralt and Eskel, then narrowed at the distracted Eskel, who was staring at the blood gushing from Geralt’s shoulder with a slack jaw. Clovis’s fingers twitched into the sign for Igni.

Geralt hissed and stomped down on Clovis’s hand with all his weight, grinding the other boy’s fingers between his heel and the rocky ground. He counted the sound of the bones popping, snapping like twigs beneath his boot, until he was sure all Clovis’s fingers had broken. Then he kicked Clovis away and spat glob of bloody spittle onto his forehead.

The rest of the trainees exchanged horrified looks.

“Steady, boy,” Vesemir said.

Geralt stilled, letting Vesemir approach again to pack his wound with pieces of cloth. His cream-colored shirt had turned red with his blood. He wondered if his skin looked any better in this color.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Vesemir said. He glanced at Eskel. “Guess that’s a no to Quen on Geralt.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Eskel whispered, “That’s not Geralt.” He was holding his casting hand clutched close to his chest like he’d injured it.

Geralt watched his own hand rise involuntarily from his side, reaching for Eskel.

Eskel flinched back, his face twisting.

Another knife plunged into Geralt’s gut. He twitched, clutching at the fabric over his stomach.

“Geralt?” Vesemir asked.

Clovis was still sobbing on the ground. There was no blood under Geralt’s hands, no knife wound to his stomach. But he felt a blade twisting in his gut, as if someone were stirring his internal organs with a white-hot poker.

The world went white and fuzzy, Geralt’s frantic brain hammering itself against the white fog in his skull. He took a few stumbling steps away, dragging Vesemir, before the fog intensified and he staggered to a stop.

“Fuck, he’s good at resisting Axii,” Varin said from a great distance. “What’s wrong with his stomach?”

“It’s empty?” Rennes said. “Fuck if I know why he barely eats.”

The Axii didn’t clear until much later that night; several of them must have hit him with it at once. Not Eskel, though. Geralt would know Eskel’s magical signature blind, deaf and three-quarters dead.

Another shooting pain punched through him, forcing Geralt’s breath from him in a huff.

He was lying in his own echoing bedchamber with a tray of food on the floor beside him. He ran calloused fingertips over the smooth, slightly sunken skin of his stomach. It was unbroken. It couldn’t be something he ate; rotten food didn’t make him sick. The mages had tested that by force-feeding him spoiled meat. And it wasn’t hunger. He’d been getting plenty to eat since Eskel returned.

His stomach turned over again.

Ah. Eskel. Thinking about Eskel hurt.

Eskel had recoiled from Geralt. Geralt didn’t matter to Eskel anymore.

Geralt knew he should be glad for that, though he couldn’t quite remember why. Anyway, it made sense, more sense than the other way around. How could anyone not be repulsed by what Geralt had become, especially someone so undeniably good as Eskel? He rejected the other trainees’ cruelty, but he didn’t care about Geralt, not really. Geralt should be glad for that. 

He wasn’t though. It hurt, like a stab to the gut, like a punctured lung. He pulled the hurt close to his chest and curled around it.

It hurt. Thank the gods.

He thought they’d taken his heart from him entirely, but there was just enough left for Eskel to break.


	5. The Path

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geralt and Eskel take their places in the world, if not with each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Grief, emotional hurt/no comfort
> 
> Not a lot to warn for in this chapter, but we'll make up for it tomorrow. Thanks everyone who has commented! It's really wonderful to have these fandom interactions, they make it all worthwhile.

Kaer Morhen did not have ceremonies. When a trainee completed his last trial, a solo hunt with minimal supplies that tested his practical skills, an instructor met him at the keep’s gate with a medallion. A few days later, there would be an empty place at the table, the newly-minted witcher sent out on the Path.

Hopefully.

Geralt was the first of their cohort to disappear.

After breakfast, Eskel climbed to the top of the wall to check for freshly disturbed soil in the fields below the keep. Vesemir found him there and knew immediately what he was doing.

“He lives, and has taken his place on the Path,” Vesemir said. “Thanks to you.”

The white-haired witcher had behaved almost normally since the incident with Clovis. He reappeared in their book learning classes and at mealtimes. He sparred with the other trainees, his moves always careful and controlled, though he avoided Clovis when he returned to practice. Most of the trainees did. No one trusted Geralt, but his feral animal reactions were far more predictable than Clovis’s cruelty.

Geralt still watched with snake-blank eyes as the other trainees laughed and talked, not even pretending to follow the conversation. He was so changed from the boy Eskel had known that not even his magic recognized him, but the Wolf deserved the same chance the rest of them got. 

“I had to do something,” Eskel told Vesemir, “Even if he would not do the same for me.”

“He would,” Vesemir said. He pursed his lips and rubbed his hand over his mustache in a rare show of discomfort.

Eskel shook his head. Geralt would have given his life to protect Eskel. The Wolf was a different story. No one knew what mattered to the Wolf, if anything did.

“You may find each other out there, on the Path,” Vesemir said.

Eskel shrugged. He didn’t care one way or the other. In the distance, a dark-clad shape broke through the trees onto an open section of the road. Eskel could just make out Geralt’s silvery hair, his arm raised towards Kaer Morhen.

Eskel didn’t wave back.

* * *

Eskel didn’t see Geralt on the Path. Nor at Kaer Morhen for the winter, not for the first five years after they got their medallions. He only knew Geralt was alive, or at least recently so, because there were so many stories about his hunts and misadventures, third-hand retellings passed on by other witchers, travelling merchants, and acolytes of Melitele. Eskel didn’t believe the stories. A witcher who protected needy villagers without taking coin, who faced impossible odds to save people who would stone him, who broke curses instead of killing the cursed…that didn’t sound like the Wolf. But the rumors were evidence that he still lived, if nothing else.

Eskel was at a table in the dining hall nursing an early morning ale and avoiding the gloomy skies when word came up from the sentries of a witcher on the Killer. The first true storm of winter was gathering on the horizon, darkening the sky behind the nearby mountain peaks.

“Cutting it close,” Gweld muttered into his porridge.

Eskel climbed to his feet and left the hall, leaving his breakfast half-eaten on the table. Something buzzed beneath his sternum, a faint fizzing like chaos that grew as he made his way to the gates. Several masters and mages had gathered in the courtyard to await the latecomer, likely more from idleness than any sense of duty. Eskel joined them, keeping a step back and to the side of his seniors.

A hooded figure in worn black leather, his wolf medallion gleaming despite the layer of road dirt over the rest of him, rode through the gate on a chestnut mare. The witcher slid off his horse and shoved back his hood, shaking out his hair like a wet dog.

The overcast lighting did Geralt no favors, dulling his silver hair to a dirty gray and washing out his pale complexion. Deep purple half circles were carved beneath his eyes. Between his coloring and his hollow cheeks, he looked more like a specter than a witcher.

“Wolf,” Vesemir greeted him using Eskel’s nickname. “I was starting to think we’d have to settle for the outlandish tales of you.”

“People lie,” Geralt said. His eyes swept across the men assembled before him, catching for a moment on the head mage and even longer on Eskel. The fizzing sensation in Eskel’s chest kicked up as they stared at each other.

Eskel raised one questioning eyebrow.

Slowly, as if expecting Eskel to turn him away, Geralt closed the distance between them, stepping into his space.

“What—” Eskel started.

Geralt slammed into him, crashing their bodies together with a quick clasp of one arm across Eskel’s shoulders, then sprang back as if burned.

Eskel blinked at him, trying to decide if he’d been hugged or assaulted. “Gods you’re weird.”

“Yes,” Geralt agreed. He was holding himself stiffly, more stiffly than usual, braced as if he expected an attack. Eskel still couldn’t read what he was thinking from his blank, empty-sky face, but he had no trouble interpreting the way he positioned his body between Eskel and their superiors, the way he watched them from the corner of his eyes.

It took only one step to close the distance between them again and sling his arm over Geralt’s stiff shoulders. He knuckled Geralt in the side as he dragged him towards the keep. “Come now Wolf, the griffin in Redania. Did you really capture it and relocate it to the wilds?”

“Depends,” Geralt said. He sucked in a deep breath and exhaled, going from gargoyle stiff to almost-human pliable under Eskel’s arm.

"On what?"

"If it came back."

Eskel laughed, a startled bark of sound that echoed in the courtyard. It wasn’t funny, not much in his life was funny, but he was godsdamned relived to have the Wolf back. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed Geralt’s largely silent, occasionally sarcastic presence at his side.

* * *

Geralt showed up to dinner a few days later, still looking half-starved but not quite so tired. A couple dozen witchers were scattered along the long tables in the hall, but he flew straight to Eskel like a crossbow bolt before rocking back on his heels in a dead stop. His face was blank, but his tight shoulders and position at Ekel’s elbow asked a question.

Eskel raised an eyebrow at him. “You gonna sit, Wolf?”

His shoulders slumping, Geralt sank onto the bench beside Eskel.

Gweld shoved several serving platters across the table to him. One of Geralt’s eyebrows ticked up.

“You look like shit,” Gweld said with a shrug.

“Thanks,” Geralt replied drily. He began piling his plate with food.

“So, any truth to that rumor that you broke a curse on an entire town?” Gweld asked Geralt. Several other witchers shifted in their seats to pay attention to Geralt; the rumors had been truly outrageous.

Geralt paused with his first bite of food halfway to his mouth to stare at Gweld. Eskel tamped down the corner of his lips as Geralt squinted in confusion. It had probably been a decade since anyone besides Eskel had directly addressed him at the dinner table.

When the silence had stretched too long, Eskel elbowed Geralt’s side to get him moving again.

“Uh. Probably. Which one?” Geralt asked Gweld.

“You’ve broken curses on more than one town?” Aubrey asked.

“Two towns and an estate,” Geralt said. 

“Pick one then,” Gweld said. “We’re starved for new stories.”

Geralt eyed his full plate.

“Winters are long,” Eskel said, “No need to burn through all the stories on the first night. Let him eat first.”

“And drink,” Geralt added. “A lot.”

Eskel was startled into a laugh. He clapped Geralt on the back, hard enough to make his palm sting. Geralt just quirked an eyebrow at him. He opened his mouth to take a bite of his dinner.

“Hang on a minute,” Eskel said. He grabbed Geralt’s chin.

Geralt sighed and pressed his lips together in a thin line.

“Lemme see,” Eskel said, poking the corner of Geralt’s mouth.

Rolling his eyes, Geralt lifted his lip. His teeth were blunt and flat, no longer the dog-like fangs that Eskel had just started getting used to.

“How?” Eskel asked, pushing Geralt’s lip out of the way so he could examine his teeth better.

“Had them filed down by a farrier.” His chin moved in Eskel’s hand as he talked, stubble scrapping his palm.

“Like a horse?” The metal rasps used on horse teeth were long as forearm, with a coarse surface that could take off skin. “Sweet Melitele. Didn’t that hurt?”

“Yes. Gonna let me eat?”

Eskel let go of Geralt’s chin. He tried not to imagine what it felt like to have your teeth filed, the screeching sound of metal across bone inside your head. He failed.

“Now I need a drink,” Eskel said, reaching for a bottle of white gull.

They ate and drank. A lot. Although most of the witchers at the table had arrived at the keep weeks ago, winter never truly started until snow closed the passes. Kaer Morhen was prepared as it could be for the long dark, now they could get down to the important business of eating, drinking, and sleeping.

Their instructors retired and the remaining witchers broke up into groups by age and temperament. Geralt kept pace with Eskel, drink for drink. Eskel did eventually manage to pry a few stories out of him. Geralt told stories like a man listing facts for a bestiary entry, so Eskel amused their cohort by embellishing every spare sentence. Their fellow witchers laughed at his antics and clapped Geralt on the back for his, startling him into spilling his drink. Then they laughed that they’d managed to startle him at all. One by one, they got up to seek their beds or more intimate company.

Eventually, it was just Geralt and Eskel left in the hall.

Geralt rubbed the heel of his hand against his chest.

“One more,” he said.

“Shot or story?” Eskel asked, handling the s sounds very carefully in his mouth.

“Both.”

“Shoot,” Eskel said. They both knocked back a slug of white gull.

“Saved a sorceress.”

“A beautiful, powerful sorceress whose life was in mortal peril,” Eskel added.

With an affirmative grunt, Geralt continued. “She was kind. Won’t be again. Her lover took advantage of it.”

Eskel sighed. “Yeah, I’ve got nothing to add to that.” The Path had taught him that Kaer Morhen’s cruelty was merely an appetizer for the world’s.

Geralt fished around in the neck of his shirt and pulled out a pendant on a fine chain. Pulling it over his head, he set it on the table between them.

“She gave this to you?” Eskel asked. It was a diamond of silver the same size as their medallions, with a clear, glowing crystal set in the middle. An Elvish inscription was cut into a border around it. “Wassit say?”

Geralt shrugged, not meeting his eyes. “Something about protection and the depth of the bearer’s heart. Or some shit. Thought she was mocking me.”

“Doesn’t sound like a kind person,” Eskel commented.

“You are though,” Geralt said.

Eskel frowned at him. “Not really.”

“You are. You’re the only person who was kind to me, before. Still are pretty much it.” He pushed the pendant towards Eskel with clumsy hands. “Want you to have it. Won’t do me any good, but you. If it really does protect the bearer in proportion to the size of their heart…might just save your life someday.”

Geralt hadn’t strung together that many words at once in decades. Eskel stared at his lips, a familiar bow that was the only part of Geralt’s face that had survived the trials unaltered.

He was still staring when Geralt kissed him. It was just a chaste press of his lips at first, until Eskel sucked in a breath in surprise, opening his mouth. Geralt’s tongue slid against his tentatively. One of his hands had come up to cup the back of Eskel’s neck.

Eskel broke the kiss, wrenching back out of Geralt’s loose hold.

“Stop, Wolf,” he panted, though Geralt hadn’t made any move to chase his lips. “I can’t do this. You’re not—You can’t—”

“Right,” Geralt said. He turned away from Eskel to stare at his folded hands on top of the table. “I forgot. I can’t.”

“It’s ok,” Eskel said, even though it wasn’t. Eskel still missed the boy Geralt had been, and this Geralt, he didn’t care. He obviously felt some sort of obligation to Eskel for his kindness, for being a decent person when everyone else treated him like a freak. Maybe he was even attracted to Eskel. But it was nothing like what they used to share, and pretending it was only mocked what Eskel had lost.

“Right,” Geralt repeated.

“You can give this to someone else,” Eskel said, touching the medallion on the table at Geralt’s elbow.

“Want you to have it.”

“That’s not—”

“You think I wouldn’t protect your life, even if you don’t want me in it?” Geralt asked. Eskel hadn’t realized his voice had lost its monotone, but now it was back, flatter than ever.

“I don’t—” Eskel stopped.

Geralt looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You do. You are wrong.” He tapped the table between them with his index finger three times.

Eskel winced. He pulled the pendant towards himself, studying the inscription. “Thank you,” he said.

Geralt took the necklace from his hands. Eskel expected him to stomp off, but instead his dropped the chain over Eskel’s head. Holding the pendant in both hands, he looked straight in Eskel’s eyes and said the inscription aloud.

Magic sighed in the air between them, a gentle wave of energy like spring’s first warm breeze. The pendant and its chain glowed. When Geralt dropped it, it hit Eskel’s witcher medallion with a chime like a bell and a flash of light.

Eskel blinked away the spots on his vision. His witcher medallion sat alone on his chest, the pendant and chain gone.

“What?” he asked, poking at his medallion. On the flat back, where Eskel’s name and the year of his cohort had been inscribed, was a diamond of silver with a glowing yellow crystal in the center. The pendant had melded itself with the back of his medallion.

“The fuck?” he asked Geralt.

No one answered. Eskel looked up, but Geralt was already gone, leaving Eskel alone in the echoing silence of the hall.


	6. The fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Kaer Morhen falls, so do the witchers who call the keep home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Grief and loss. **Rough, not negotiated, gray-area-of-consent sex.** Dom/sub undertones. Sex as a coping mechanism. Top drop. 
> 
> This chapter contains rougher sexytimes. While I intend it to read as not-completely healthy, but still mutually pleasurable sex, please see the end notes for a more detailed content warning if you have any doubts at all.
> 
> Thanks for all your support so far!! The Gerskel shippers are few but vocal, and I appreciate you! I'm nervous about this one. Let me know what you think.

The decades passed. Empires climbed and crumbled around Eskel, not around him and Geralt as the other boy had once promised. Time and trauma quickly eclipsed the nonsense they’d sworn into each other’s skin as children, until all their youthful tenderness was little more than the dim memory of a nice dream, equally unbelievable and forgettable. Then Kaer Morhen fell like the ephemeral human construct it wasn’t supposed to be, and Eskel knew every assumption he’d made about living forever was wrong.

Geralt returned to the ruined keep a day after Eskel, appearing through the golden swirl of a portal in the middle of the bloody courtyard.

“Sorcerer owed me a favor,” he said as Eskel and Lambert stared. Vesemir didn’t look up from his grim task.

“Flashy bastard,” Eskel croaked out. The smoke from the pyres had wrecked his voice, making it a match to Geralt’s gravelly growl.

“A little late,” Lambert said without any heat.

Geralt said nothing, but Eskel saw indecision in his stance and guilt in the wrinkle between his brows. Or maybe that’s just what he wanted to see.

“Nothing you could have done,” Vesemir said. He bent to drag another body onto the pyre. “Except die among them.”

He had repeated this refrain a dozen times. None of them believed it yet.

They burned their dead. When all the bodies had been put to the torch, Vesemir went inside to sleep and Lambert went to drink, leaving Eskel and Geralt to keep an eye on the unruly flames. It took a lot of heat to cremate witcher bones, the mutagens robbing them of their humanity even in death.

Geralt was still, so very still, standing beside him. The soft clink of his medallion’s chain was the only indication he was breathing. If Eskel strained, he could just hear Geralt’s slow, steady heartbeat beneath the crackling of the flames. He counted the beats and clamped down on the chaos fizzing in his blood, burning under his sternum with nowhere to go.

“Can’t cry,” Geralt said, as the eastern horizon began to lighten.

Eskel shook himself and eyed the other witcher sideways. He could read nothing from Geralt’s tone and had no idea what to do with that comment.

Geralt growled, low and frustrated. For the first time that day, Eskel really looked at him.

He was lean and hollow-cheeked, a shade closer to skeletal than last time Eskel had seen him, and he’d never had bulk to spare. His lips were pulled tight over his teeth, frown lines carving valleys into the skin around his mouth. He looked miserable.

“What?” Eskel asked eloquently.

“I can’t cry,” Geralt repeated. “This body won’t.”

Eskel blinked. How would Geralt know that, when the urge to cry was supposed to be burned out of him entirely? Inhaling deeply, Eskel could smell wood-smoke, blood, and grief, but he couldn’t tell who that last scent was coming from. It had probably seeped into the very stones of the keep by now.

With a snarl, Geralt whirled, headed not for the remnants of the keep but for the gate. The Path.

Eskel caught him with a hand on his shoulder, latching onto his pauldron and dragging his feet until Geralt stopped with a hiss and bared teeth. Eskel held on. Geralt hadn’t bitten him yet.

“Not being able to cry,” Eskel said, “Is not the same as not mourning. I think I get it.”

Eskel slid his hand across Geralt’s armored shoulder to the bare nape of his neck. He hesitated at the stiffness of the muscles beneath his palm, uncertain if he was overstepping his place. Geralt hissed again but didn’t pull away.

“I get it,” Eskel repeated, studying the other man’s haggard face. “It’s ok. You’re ok.”

The boy Geralt had been would have responded by throwing himself into Eskel’s arms, clutching him close and whispering a torrent of words into his ear.

This Geralt heaved a sigh that seemed to come from his toes and collapsed onto Eskel’s shoulder. Eskel’s body relaxed in answer, the two of them sinking to a seat beside each other on the stairs. They slumped together as their tension drained away.

“At least they’re in a better place now,” Eskel said.

“Hmm,” Geralt said.

“Hmm?”

“Witcher afterlife might be worse than actual life. Won’t know until we get there.”

Eskel leaned away to level a more effective stare at Geralt’s blank face. “You’re a ray of gods-damned sunshine.”

“One of my many charms.”

Eskel laughed, then clapped his hand over his mouth. “If there is a hell, I’m headed there.”

“You’ll be in good company.”

“What, you? You flatter yourself.”

“Lambert’s definitely going to hell for that stunt with the harpies.”

Eskel laughed again. The burning crackle of his magic flared along his skin at the sound.

“You’re glowing,” Geralt commented idly.

“So I am,” Eskel said. He glanced down at his hands in his lap, radiating light.

“I’m cold,” Geralt said.

“We’re sitting in front of a funeral pyre.”

“Have been all night. Help them along, Esk.”

Eskel’s stomach clenched at the nickname; Geralt hadn’t called him that in years. He raised his hand and blasted power into the pyre before them. The flames leapt, high as the wall then higher, filling the courtyard with blazing red-orange light to match the burning orb of the rising sun.

As he burned the bones of their fallen brothers, Eskel imagined them free from the cruelty of the lonely Path, free from the monsters they fought and the men who treated them like monsters.

When his hand began to shake, Eskel let it drop back to his lap. The fire died away, like the trainees and their instructors, like the auburn-haired boy Eskel had mourned for decades.

Eskel let that boy go too.

Beside him, Geralt’s body was a warm, solid weight.

* * *

Diedre took Eskel’s face, made him a monster to match the monstrous way he’d treated her and her destiny. He’d failed his child surprise, and he would wear that failure where the whole world could see it for the rest of his life.

Geralt found him in his room at Kaer Morhen. Eskel had destroyed most of the furniture by then, rending cloth and wood with his bare hands.

Eskel noticed the chemical/animal smell of Geralt’s body and spun to find him leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. He’d stripped out of his armor and was down to just his cream-colored undershirt and a pair of loose breeches. Eskel could see scars and silvery chest hair in the deep v of his neckline, more of Geralt’s skin than he’d seen in decades.

He wanted to bite that exposed collar bone.

“Now we are both monsters among freaks,” Eskel said to Geralt’s sternum. He didn’t remember crossing the room.

“Not you, never you,” Geralt said. His hand came up to hover by Eskel’s scarred cheek, fingers twitching like he wanted to touch. He looked at Eskel like he was the last torch in a cavern of darkness and Eskel hated him for it, hated him for growing feelings now.

Eskel grabbed his wrist and spun Geralt around to face the wall, slamming him into the stone with his arm twisted up behind his back.

“I’m hideous, a monster,” Eskel spat in Geralt’s ear as he used his body to crush Geralt into the wall. 

“Never,” Geralt said. His face was smashed sideways, his neck kinked at a terrible angle under Eskel’s hand, but when he met Eskel’s eyes over his shoulder his expression of utter faith never wavered.

“Don’t fucking look at me,” Eskel said. He bit the juncture between Geralt’s neck and shoulder, tasting blood, and rutted his hips against the swell of Geralt’s ass. He yanked on the back of Geralt’s breeches hard enough to snap the lacing, dragging them down below his ass and gripping one cheek with bruising force.

“Tell me to stop,” Eskel dared him.

“You are not a monster,” Geralt said. His heartrate had picked up, but he made no move to resist Eskel.

“The fuck I’m not,” Eskel said. Kicking Geralt’s legs apart hard enough to knock him off his feet, he caught him against the wall with the weight of his body.

“You’re the best man I know,” Geralt said, his voice thready from force Eskel was applying to his ribcage. “You’re the biggest-hearted man I know.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, shoving his fingers into Geralt’s mouth.

Geralt choked and drooled, the tips of his human-flat teeth scraping on Eskel’s knuckles. Eskel had a moment’s wild wish Geralt still had his fangs, could bite off the fingers that were choking him, so that Eskel could never hold a sword again. But instead of biting, Geralt sucked, the sensation of his rough tongue moving on Eskel’s fingers driving even more blood to his cock. He pulled his fingers out of Geralt’s mouth when the other man’s eyes began to roll back in his head.

“Tell me to stop,” Eskel ordered, spreading that spare wetness between Geralt’s cheeks. “Tell me to stop, and let’s find out if I do.”

“You are not a monster,” Geralt said. His breath punched out of him when Eskel pushed a finger into his ass.

“Shut up,” Eskel said. He added another finger. Geralt’s ass fluttered, his body twitching and jerking in time with Eskel’s rough thrusts. He’d gotten his free hand behind him and was clutching at the back of Eskel’s thigh.

He was pulling Eskel closer.

“Esk—”

“Shut up!” he repeated as he yanked his fingers free and batted away Geralt’s hand. He pulled out his cock and lined up. Geralt's body was rigid and unyielding, the hole Eskel's cockhead was pressed to neither slick nor loose enough. “Tell me to stop,” he whispered into the sweaty silver hair at Geralt’s nape.

“You’re a good man—” Geralt cut himself off with a whine as Eskel entered him in a single, unrelenting thrust. The sound stoked Eskel’s hunger and self-loathing in equal measure, made him want to force more mewling cries out of the body beneath him.

“I am a monster,” Eskel said, punctuating each word with a thrust that slapped his hips against Geralt’s ass. Geralt’s body was vice-tight, clinging to him almost painfully.

Geralt didn’t argue anymore.

Eskel pounded into him. He let his chin drop to Geralt’s shoulder, his scarred cheek stinging where it slid against Geralt’s stubbled face, panting Geralt’s breath as he rammed himself home over and over. At some point he dropped Geralt’s wrist. Their left hands ended up flat on the wall beside Geralt’s shoulder, one on top of the other and fingers intertwined. Eskel’s wrapped his other arm around Geralt’s waist and jerked him off in time to his own thrusts, pulling tiny gasping hitches of breath from him.

The impossible tightness around him clamped down even harder and the smell of come scented the air. Eskel bit down on Geralt’s shoulder and spilled, emptying himself into the willing/unwilling body beneath him with a final thrust that made Geralt writhe.

They slid down the wall in mess of tangled limbs and bodily fluids.

For several long, glorious minutes, Eskel was completely empty.

He sucked in a deep breath of the lust-laden air and scented blood.

Eskel’s eyes popped open. They were still joined, with Eskel wrapped around Geralt’s back, slumped sideways against the wall. Eskel couldn’t see Geralt’s face behind the shield of his hair.

There was blood on every bit of bare skin he could see. Geralt’s neck had seeping bite marks on it, his hips had hand-shaped bruises already purpling on them. When Eskel pulled back to free himself from Geralt’s body, the other witcher hissed and arched against him.

“Sweet Melitele, what have I done?” He froze with his arms wrapped around Geralt, not knowing if he should recoil or embrace the other man more firmly.

“It’s mostly your blood.” Geralt’s voice was a rockslide across a chalkboard. He collapsed back into Eskel’s arms.

“What?” Eskel asked, holding Geralt close.

“Your hands. You were hurting yourself.”

Eskel looked down at his hands. One was pressed over Geralt’s belly, the other was still tangled with Geralt’s fingers. Both were missing fingernails and smeared to the wrist with half-dried blood.

“Oh.” Eskel leaned back and looked lower, to where their bodies had joined. There was blood there too. “Shit shit shit.”

“Again, mostly your blood.”

“Mostly?” Bile rose in Eskel’s throat.

Geralt dragged Eskel’s hand up his chest until his palm was pressed to Geralt’s sternum. “Breathe with me, Esk. I’m ok. We’re ok.”

“Just like that? I practically ra—”

“I think it’s the human in you.”

“I—what?” The walls of the room were wavering.

“Breathe, dumbass.” He took an exaggerated breath to demonstrate. Eskel blinked and sucked in a ragged breath in time with the chest cradled in his arms, then another after that, until reality stopped bending at the edges.

“Anyway. You’re too human. Feel too much.” Geralt yawned. He shimmied his shoulders back into Eskel’s chest a little more snugly. “Easier to be a monster sometimes.”

“I wish that didn’t make sense.”

“Hmm.”

“Wolf, I’m so sorry—hey, don’t go to sleep, I’m begging for forgiveness here,” Eskel frowned down at the back of Geralt’s head.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter! You matter.”

“Whatever. Just a rough fuck, Eskel. I’ll live.”

“I shouldn’t have—”

“I didn’t tell you to stop. I wouldn’t.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“Tough shit. Now go to sleep.” Geralt leaned forward, sliding sideways down the wall and dragging Eskel over his back like a blanket as he sprawled out on the floor. He pulled one of Eskel’s furs closer and flapped it once to shake off the splinters and broken glass, then haphazardly tossed it around the two of them. Eskel caught one corner and straightened it out until they were tucked in more carefully.

“I’m never going to forgive myself for this,” Eskel whispered as they lay together amongst the broken furniture and torn clothing, the shattered pieces of Eskel’s life digging into their bare skin. Geralt’s hair was silk soft against his wounded cheek, cool and smooth as water. “For any of it.”

“I know,” Geralt said. “Like I said. A good man.”

“If this was all just a terrible way to make your point, you’re an asshole.”

“I am. A horny asshole, no less.”

Eskel snorted. He buried his nose in Geralt’s bloody neck and inhaled, scenting Geralt and blood, but no pain, and something that reminded him a little of freshly baked bread. Geralt tapped the back of Eskel’s hand, still pressed tight against Geralt’s bony sternum.

_Tap tap tap._

“We are ok,” he repeated.

Eskel almost believed him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While this may be a darker than warranted interpretation of Eskel, I couldn’t shake the idea that he’d need to control something in his life and Geralt would be there, ready and willing to surrender to him. So. Shrug. 
> 
> **Detailed CW:** Geralt does not explicitly consent to this angry, somewhat violent sex. Although Eskel offers Geralt several opportunities to withdraw consent, it isn’t clear if Eskel would actually stop. It’s fairly clear Geralt would never ask him to, even if it progressed beyond what he was comfortable with. Both parties enjoy the actual act, despite how poorly negotiated it is, but Eskel suffers emotional fallout when it’s over. Geralt does his best to manage it, and surprises us all by being halfway good at aftercare


	7. Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eskel is there for Geralt, and not in the way Geralt assumes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Canon-typical violence and gore. Self-sacrificing idiots. Geralt’s shit self-esteem.
> 
> Alright, well! Yesterday went better than expected! Thank you so much to everyone who commented, that was a scary chapter for me and I appreciate hearing how you reacted to it. I really needed that yesterday so. Thanks. 
> 
> Shorter chapter today, and I'm not sure when/if tomorrow's chapter will get up. If you're stateside, Happy Thanksgiving in advance. If you aren't, we love you anyway and happy random Thursday in November.

The carnage was devasting.

Geralt couldn’t tell how many corpses were spread across the quarter mile of bloody road, there were too many pieces, but he counted at least fourteen, maybe sixteen men. Their haphazard mercenary armor had been no help, arms and legs were sliced and sometimes torn off, decapitated heads stared sightlessly at the gray sky. The scattered body parts trailed up the road as if they had been chasing something, bunching at the point they realized they were outmatched. The bodies at that terminus lay in two directions. The smarter men died trying to flee back the way they’d come.

He looked down at himself, at his armor blackened by blood and viscera. A glob of something viscous dripped slowly down the hair hanging next to his face, dangling for a moment at the tip before falling to land with a plop on the toe of his boot.

Geralt had done this.

Turning away from the destruction, Geralt wandered down the road, leaving a trail of blood even a human would have no trouble following. And it was not a human who hunted him now.

The road descended into a shallow swamp. When Geralt had gone a couple hundred yards into the mist-softened landscape he forced himself to face the way he’d come. Dropping to his knees in the shallow water, he knelt with his head down and his steel sword in his lap.

He waited.

The leader of the dead mercenaries had shouted something just before Geralt had beheaded him.

“’e’s coming for you, you devil-begotten whoreson. One of your own’s a comin' for you, for what you did in Blaviken!”

As long as it wasn’t Eskel. Vesemir would survive putting Geralt down, one of the vipers would probably enjoy it, but Eskel would never recover. Geralt couldn’t make Eskel kill him.

He stared at the sword on his knees as the sun crawled across the sky. He did not look up when a shape finally began to materialize out of the mist, moving on cat-silent feet with a blade unsheathed in one hand.

“Wolf? Thank the gods I’ve found you.”

It was Eskel.

“Cruel of him to send you,” Geralt said as he raised his head. The dried blood on his cheeks cracked when he spoke, flaking into his scraggly beard.

“No one sent me,” Eskel said.

Geralt's eyes burned, uncryable tears clogging the back of his throat. Eskel had come to kill him of his own volition.

“You don’t have to do this,” Geralt said. He stood, taking the blade of his sword in his bare hand and offering the hilt to Eskel.

“I…don’t?” Eskel asked, the confusion plain in his voice. He looked at Geralt’s sword and then down at his own.

Geralt understood. Eskel thought he had to kill Geralt to stop his murderous rampage. He didn’t see any way out of it. But Geralt did.

He dropped his steel sword at Eskel’s feet. He reached over his shoulder and drew his silver sword, holding it with one hand around the hilt and the other cradling the naked blade. The weight was familiar, comforting, the only comfort Geralt deserved.

“This is the only thing I can do to make it better,” Geralt said.

He lifted his sword towards his own throat.

“No!” Eskel shouted. He dropped his sword and tackled Geralt with one hand on his chest, grabbing the blade with the other.

“Sweet Melitele,” Eskel gasped as they landed with a splash in the shallow water. “Drop it!”

Fresh blood welled between the fingers Geralt had wrapped around his blade as they fought for control, the edge rasping across skin of Geralt’s neck in a series of parallel lines.

“Drop it!” Eskel yelled, slamming his fist down hard on Geralt’s sternum three times.

Geralt’s stomach clenched at the familiar cadence.

He let go of the sword. Eskel sent it spinning out into the swamp, throwing it as far from them as he could.

The distant splash and their panting were the only sounds in the still air.

Geralt squinted up at Eskel, kneeling above him with his knees on either side of Geralt’s ribcage. Did those three taps on Geralt’s chest mean anything to Eskel? Did he remember?

“What. The fuck.”

Apparently not.

Geralt cleared his throat, trying to speak around the tightness there. “I know what the rumors say about Blaviken. Vesemir will have to put me down now.”

“And what really happened?”

Geralt shut his eyes. “I killed them. I killed them all.”

Eskel knuckled Geralt’s sternum. “Yeah, I knew that part. Why?”

“Renfri she—Stregobor had—” Geralt growled. He opened his eyes and begged Eskel with them.

“That’s not an answer, Wolf.”

Geralt bit his lip. “Renfri was a princess born under the black sun.”

Eskel flinched back, clapping his hand over his scarred cheek.

“I know,” Geralt said, giving Eskel’s thigh an awkward pat, “We have a shit record with that curse.”

“Curse! More like ignorant superstition.”

“People think they’re cursed, that’s all that matters. They treated Renfri just as bad as they treated Deidre. She wanted revenge. She and her bandits would have killed the entire town to draw out the mage she held responsible.”

“And this lot?” Eskel gestured vaguely at the road behind him.

“Hired to kill me by some random lord.”

Eskel sighed. His hand dropped to Geralt’s chest again and rapped his knuckles on Geralt’s sternum, three times.

Geralt flinched. He wrapped one of his bloody hands around Eskel’s fist to still it.

“You could just hunt monsters, you know,” Eskel said. “Your life would be so much easier.”

Geralt tilted his head to the side. One of his eyebrows crawled up his forehead. “You’re not here to kill me.”

“No, you absolute ass hat. I’m here because I was worried about you.”

Geralt lost control of both his eyebrows in his surprise.

Eskel huffed. “I heard the rumors, yeah. But I knew they were bullshit.”

“How?” Geralt was a monster among freaks, the worst of their kind. If any of them had lost control and slaughtered an entire town, it would be Geralt. Or a cat. Or one of the vipers. Hmm. Anyway, he was the least stable of the wolves, and they all knew it.

Except Eskel, it seemed.

“You wouldn’t do that,” he said with a smile that twisted his marred lip. “You’re too good.”

“You think so.”

“I know so.” The smile dropped off Eskel’s face. He put his palm on Geralt’s collarbone, his fingers curving over the junction between Geralt’s neck and shoulder, where the layers of his armor hid the scars from Eskel’s teeth. “You’re too good to me, no matter how little I deserve it.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm,” Eskel repeated. He sat back, settling his weight Geralt’s chest a little harder. “Wolf. Before I let you up, gotta ask. Do you…do you want to die?”

Geralt shook his head. “Nah. Just didn’t want to make you kill me.”

“Gee, thanks,” Eskel said. He climbed off Geralt and swiped ineffectively at his trousers, spreading the mud around.

“What now?” Geralt asked as he sat up.

“We eat and drink. A lot. Then we figure out how to explain to Vesemir what really happened. Better go get your sword first, though.”

Geralt narrowed his eyes at Eskel. “If you tell me to fetch, I’ll kick your ass.”

“Sure you will.” Eskel levered Geralt to his feet.

“I won’t,” Geralt pointed out, in case it needed to be said.

“I know.”

Eskel smiled, reeling Geralt into his arms for a hug, despite the gore spattering his armor, despite his reputation as a mass murderer. He had faith in Geralt, even though he didn’t remember the promise he’d made when they were boys. That was ok. The boy Eskel had made that promise to died screaming half a century ago anyway. Geralt didn't deserve any of the promises Eskel had made to him. 


	8. Geralt loves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The great loves of Geralt’s life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Mentions of past torture (the trials)
> 
> This fic could also be titled "Geralt and Eskel take turns being idiots for a century". I'm thankful for all your support, please enjoy some more angst on the house!

“So. You are Eskel,” a woman said.

Eskel looked up from his watery stew. The woman standing across the table from him had loosely curling, inky hair and violet eyes. Wearing a black silk dress with a neckline that plunged to reveal her belly button, she wouldn’t have been out of place in a high-end specialty brothel, but here in a grubby inn at the foot of the blue mountains she stood out like a peacock among pigeons.

“Yennefer of Vengerberg, I presume,” Eskel said, tipping his head in greeting. The humming of the medallion on his chest left little room for doubt.

One delicate eyebrow arched. “Indeed.”

Eskel scanned the crowd. The people in the common room moved around Yennefer without bumping her, they clearly knew someone was there, but their suspicious glares were still landing on Eskel.

“What do they see?” he asked.

“An old woman, a peddler,” Yennefer said.

“A surprisingly traditional illusion.”

“The classics never grow old. Though, perhaps they do lose their effectiveness. You should be seeing an old woman too.”

“Always been a bit outside the normal that way.”

“That’s what I have been told.”

“Is there something I can do for you?” A terrible thought occurred to him.

“Geralt is fine, making his way to your wretched keep for winter as we speak.”

Eskel forced himself to breathe through the shot of adrenaline pulsing through his veins. “Forgot about the mind reading.”

“It’s fascinating. You’re easier to read than he is, despite the chaos in your blood.” Her unnerving purple eyes hadn’t left Eskel’s face yet. He wondered if this was how humans felt, meeting his eyes.

“Had more than enough of mages and their fascination with witchers, thank you.” Eskel rubbed at his scars.

“You hate me,” Yennefer said. “Hypocritical of you.”

She was right, Eskel did hate her. He would have hated her on principle, she was too like the chaos-wielding child surprise who took his face, but he hated her more specifically for how she treated Geralt.

“You’ve made him a harder man, Yennefer. You’ve made his walls higher. And they were already nigh-on unscalable.”

Yennefer snorted, loud and inelegant. “That was my doing, was it?”

“What do you want, Yennefer of Vengerberg?”

“Many things. Power, wealth, legacy…to crush this world between my hands before I take the next one.”

Eskel laughed. “Refreshingly honest. Not much I can help you with there.”

“Fortunate that I am here to help you, then.”

Rolling his eyes, Eskel kicked the bench opposite himself away from the table. Yennefer sank onto as if seating herself on a throne. “What is the price of your unsolicited help?”

“I do this for my own edification alone.”

“Right. Do what exactly?”

“Geralt’s mind has been tampered with.”

“Recently?” Eskel’s stomach gave another uncomfortable lurch.

Yennefer’s eyebrows furrowed. “No, in that misbegotten ‘school’ of yours when he was a child, I suspect.”

“That’s not really a revelation.”

“There are pieces missing, burned out or perhaps locked away by a mage. Someone who wielded his power with all the subtly of a blacksmith.”

“You haven’t gotten to the part where you’re helping yet.”

“I’ve done some superficial work on it. But there are stronger spells, trances that might pry open the cauterized parts of his mind. If we can get the missing pieces back—”

“What? Then he’d be fixed? All the trauma gone in a puff of smoke? That’s not how it works, and you know it. Why is this so important to you?”

“They violated his mind, you fool.” Yennefer snarled at him, the angry expression twisting her inhumanely beautiful face into something more real. “They ripped away pieces of the most intimate part of him, without his permission. It was wrong.”

“Yes, it was.” Eskel gave up on his unappetizing dinner, pushing it away from himself. “Does he know what you want to do?”

She rocked back in her seat. “He doesn’t know what’s best for himself.”

“Ah. So he knows what you want to do and he refused your help. Now you’re trying to force it on him. Surely you don’t need a fool like me to explain the hypocrisy.”

“If I can make him whole again—”

“He is whole, Yennefer. He lives, he might even love.”

Yennefer waved a dismissive hand. “Bah. Broken things like us know nothing of love.”

“You really believe that.”

“You…you really don’t.” Her head tilted to the side, a Geralt-ism she must have absorbed unconsciously.

Eskel thought back on last winter. Geralt had spent much of his time at Kaer Morhen in aimless wandering around the keep, staring off into the distance with his brows knit or sighing over elven ballads. When Eskel got him drunk enough, Geralt even managed to admit in halting, bitten-out sentences that Yennefer was the cause of it all.

“She makes me feel,” he said, punctuating the statement with an audible grind of his teeth. “Not just bad, either.”

Eskel had wondered at the ‘just’, wondered if she also hurt Geralt, or if that was Eskel, who just made him feel bad.

Yennefer cleared her throat pointedly, bringing Eskel out of his musing.

“I used to believe he couldn’t love,” Eskel said. “I’m not so sure anymore. He pines for you, Yennefer of Vengerberg.”

“…as he should,” she said, the pause giving away her surprise.

“Hmph. Then love him for the man he is and don’t meddle with his mind,” Eskel said. “Or find out why they call me the dragon of Kaer Morhen.”

Yennefer’s grin had a dangerous edge, but she inclined her head once before taking her leave.

*

“Thought you’d spend this winter in some palatial estate Yennefer had acquired in dubious circumstances,” Eskel said as Geralt rode through Kaer Morhen’s rusty gate a few days later.

Geralt dismounted, fiddling with Roach’s reins. He didn’t respond to Eskel’s not-quite-a-question question.

That night as they soaked in the hot springs, Eskel counted the love bites and scratch marks on Geralt and tried to figure out if he was jealous. He wasn’t _not_ jealous, he decided, when he bent Geralt over the edge of the pool and left his own marks on Geralt’s skin, one for every mark the sorceress had left and then a few more for good measure.

Afterwards, when Geralt had shuddered back to himself and Eskel had finished his litany of self-recrimination, Geralt finally answered Eskel’s question.

“Yen wants the world. She wants more than the world.”

“Sounds like a sorceress,” Eskel said. He brushed a stray strand of Geralt’s hair out of his face.

“Can’t give it to her. Give her what I can, she finds the rest elsewhere.”

“So you’re in an off-again phase of your on-again, off-again thing.”

Geralt grunted in affirmation. They were laying in a damp heap on the warm stone beside the spring, with Eskel hanging off Geralt’s back like a shield. Eskel tucked him closer to his chest, wrapping himself more completely around Geralt’s body, and tried to ignore the voice in his head saying the only thing Geralt needed protection from was Eskel.

“And what do you want?” Eskel asked for the first time.

“I—” he cut himself off with a growl. “I can’t.”

“You can’t…what?”

“I—” he gave another wordless growl, this one high pitched enough it was practically a whine. He shuddered in Eskel’s arms.

“Shh,” Eskel said, lacing their fingers together over Geralt’s chest. Talking about emotions often seemed physically painful for the Wolf; it was one of the reasons Eskel seldom questioned his friend. He didn’t think too hard about the other reasons. “It’s alright.”

“No,” Geralt ground out, his broken voice threaded through with new steel. “If Yen can have so much of what she wants, I can have a little too.” His index finger tapped the back of Eskel’s hand three times.

_Tap tap tap._

“Damn right,” Eskel said, tightening his arms.

Eskel never really stopped hating Yennefer for how she treated Geralt, fully knowing how hypocritical that made him. But he forgave her a little after that. She made Geralt harder, but she taught him to want something for himself in a way Eskel hadn’t seen from the Wolf in years.

* * *

Geralt had been grumble-pining over Jaskier for a few winters before Eskel met the bard. He was on the Path just outside Vizima when he caught Geralt’s scent mixed with Jaskier’s silk and chamomile on the evening breeze.

It was a fine midsummer night. The sun had just slid below the horizon and the sky was purpling. Eskel picketed Scorpion and snuck up on their camp to observe them from the shadows.

They had an elaborate setup, by witcher standards. Their bedrolls were laid out on bowers of fir branches, a fallen log was pulled up to the fire pit as a seat and the scent of hearty stew filled the air of the little clearing. Geralt sat on the log, stirring a pot over the fire as Jaskier played the lute at his feet. The bard was trying out new lyrics and discarding them on the spare feedback of Geralt’s micro expressions.

“Then noble as a dragon steed/he left the town, its lasses freed!” Jaskier sang.

Eskel barely swallowed his laugh at the wrinkle in Geralt’s nose.

“Right, that was a bit shit. Not the proper number of syllables anyway.” Jaskier stared blankly into the darkness in Eskel’s direction. The blood drained from his face.

“Geralt,” he breathed, “There’s something out there.”

Damn eyeshine, it gave Eskel away every time. He dropped his gaze to hide his eyes from the firelight.

“Not something. Just Eskel,” Geralt said without looking up from his cooking.

“I am downwind, Wolf,” Eskel said, miffed.

“Can hear your heartbeat.” Geralt turned to look straight at Eskel.

“I could have been a bear or something.”

Geralt snorted. “Would know your heartbeat anywhere.”

“Really?” Jaskier asked in tones of wonder. “Wait. Geralt, do you have an actual, honest-to-gods friend?”

“Hmm.”

“Sorry, don’t know that one. What kind of hum was that?”

Eskel felt his lips twitch up. “That was ‘it’s too complicated to explain in less than ten words, so I’m not going to bother’.”

“Oh good! The mysterious, maybe-friend in the darkness is fluent.”

“He’s my…” Geralt’s face shuttled through truncated expressions, something like pain crimping the skin around his eyes “…my Eskel.”

“Indeed,” Jaskier said. The stare he turned back towards Eskel was too sharp for his round, babyish face. “Would you like to join us, Geralt’s Eskel?”

Eskel stood from his crouch, hesitating on the edge of the firelight. He pulled his hood up further. This man mattered to Geralt; it would be best if Jaskier could get to know Eskel a little before he saw the horror that was his face.

He stepped into the light.

“Wow,” Jaskier said as Eskel loomed out of the dark. “Big and brooding is a witcher requirement then, and not just a Geralt thing.”

Geralt got to his feet and came to stand in front of Eskel. “He’s not brooding.”

“Wolf—” Eskel cut himself off as Geralt’s hands came up to his hood. He paused, giving Eskel time to pull away, then knocked back his hood and wrapped his arms around Eskel’s neck in one motion.

Jaskier gasped.

Eskel buried his face in Geralt’s neck and clung to his friend, or less-than-friend, or possibly even more-than-friend.

When Geralt released Eskel he stayed close. Eskel’s fingers twitched, but he was stopped from raising his hand to rub self-consciously at his scars by Geralt’s loose grip around his wrist. He made a face at the Wolf when he realized what Geralt was doing.

Jaskier’s mouth was hanging open.

“Shut him up, at least,” Geralt said.

“Wha—Rude! It’s just…” Jaskier sputtered, and Eskel tensed. “You hugged him! You, Geralt of Rivia, voluntarily sought physical contact with another person.”

Geralt’s head tilted to the side. “With Eskel.”

“Am I not a person?” Eskel asked, still watching Jaskier’s face. The bard was staring at them, at where Geralt’s side was melded to Eskel’s, not at his ruined cheek.

“More than,” Geralt said, as if that made any sense.

“Ooo, here’s a riddle to occupy our evenings. When is a person more than a person?” Jaskier clapped his hands in delight.

Eskel laughed, and Jaskier’s grin widened. “This is going to be fun.”

Geralt sighed.

When Eskel returned from fetching Scorpion he found another log drawn up the fire, the impromptu seat softened by a saddle blanket. Geralt offered him a bowl of stew, and Eskel added a couple of fresh apples to their dinner.

“For you, not your horse,” Eskel said as he handed them over. “So, where are you two headed?”

“This is wonderful actually,” Jaskier said, fiddling with his lute. “I recently received an invitation to play at the midsummer celebration of Lord Falconer. He wants to hear the White Wolf cycle, my most recent collection of ballads, and has invited Geralt along since he inspired it. Surely another witcher would be more than welcome!”

Eskel smiled at the young man’s genuine enthusiasm, his naivete.

“Not big on parties, really,” he said. “Far as I know, Geralt isn’t either.”

Geralt frowned at him. Eskel shrugged. _You aren’t._

“Oh, right,” Jaskier said, deflating. “Yeah, that shouldn’t surprise me. I basically knew that already. You don’t have to come either, Geralt.”

“Told you I would,” Geralt said.

Eskel quirked a brow at him. Geralt twitched one shoulder in a shrug, shifting his weight uncomfortably. He flicked his fingers. _Later._

With a nod, Eskel dropped it.

Jaskier had watched the silent exchange with wide eyes. “Can you two…read each other’s minds?”

Eskel barked a laugh that startled the horses, the weight of the Path falling away like a wet cloak sliding off his shoulders, and even Geralt grimace-smiled. “Gods no, we can’t. We’ve just known each other as long as we’ve known ourselves.”

“Longer,” Geralt said. His smile was gone. Eskel kicked his shin gently.

“It’s not a night for dark thoughts, Wolf,” he said.

Jaskier hugged himself, likely to keep his hands from landing on one of the witchers; he was looking very much like he wanted to launch himself at them both.

“Come with us, to the celebration?” Jaskier asked Eskel.

It would be easier to murder kittens than turn him down, especially when Eskel glanced at Geralt and found an echo of the same begging look mirrored the white Wolf’s face.

Which is how Eskel found himself, armor newly polished and skin duly scrubbed pink, standing elbow to elbow with Geralt while a parade of nobles shuffled past. None of them tried to speak to the two witchers, just staring as they made comments behind their hands.

“Ghastly. My lord does have the oddest taste in entertainment.”

“Indeed, and to be forced tolerate the bardling’s caterwauling for the privilege of this freakshow.”

Eskel grinned at them, the smile that twisted up the scarred side of his face.

The circle of empty space around them got substantially larger.

Geralt tugged his sleeve three times without looking away from the stage. “Thanks,” he said.

“For?”

“Coming along. This lord has got a reputation, didn’t know if he was going to try and add me to the menagerie.”

Eskel didn’t ask why Geralt had come anyway, the white wolf hadn’t taken his eyes off Jaskier all night. The bard was radiant in blue silk, standing on the raised podium with his lute as he sang. His ballads weren’t all that bad, to Eskel’s ears, though maybe that was because Geralt was the subject matter.

“Don’t tell Jask,” Geralt said.

Eskel smiled at the nickname. “Why?”

“It’ll hurt him.” Geralt shook his head at the thought of hurt feelings, fondness gentling the harsh lines of his face.

“He’s made you soft.”

Geralt’s expression shuttered. “Not soft.”

“You are, just a little. You care about him. Not just his safety, but his happiness.”

“I can’t.” He scowled, lips twisting up to reveal human-dull teeth.

“You do. You practically just said so.” Eskel studied the profile of his friend’s troubled face. “Should I hate him for it?” Hating good-natured, generous-hearted Jaskier would be much more difficult than hating Yennefer. But if the relationship between Geralt and Jaskier was making Geralt miserable, Eskel would hate the bard too.

“Don’t know yet. If it gets me killed, I suppose.”

“It won’t. Might just save your life by making it worth living.”

Geralt rolled his eyes. “Knew the two of you would get along. Both think you’re fucking poets.”

“Actually, you’re fucking poets.”

Geralt barked out a sharp laugh that made the crowd back even further away. “That was awful. Worse than any of mine.” His subtle smile was back, lurking around the corners of his mouth. It widened when Jaskier threw him an exaggerated wink.

He still hadn’t looked at Eskel.

Later that night, Jaskier and Geralt fell asleep in separate bedrolls and somehow ended up in each other's arms. Eskel laid awake, looking across the cold fire at them.

Geralt was sprawled out on his back, his limbs long and loose, more of his body outside the bedroll than in. Jaskier's head was pillowed on his chest, rising and falling with each of Geralt's breaths. His snores synced up perfectly with Jaskier's, exactly one quiet little rasp for every two of the bard's louder snorts.

Eskel had never heard Geralt snore.

Rising on cat-silent feet, Eskel began to gather his belongings. He couldn't resent Geralt for finding a little happiness; the Wolf had been subjected to enough pain and suffering. He deserved to be loved. But Eskel didn't have to hang around to watch it.

He finished packing and tacking up Scorpion, then turned to go. Pausing at the edge of their camp, Eskel couldn't stop himself from glancing back at his friend one more time.

Neither Jaskier nor Geralt showed any awareness of Eskel's nocturnal prowling. As he watched, Jaskier muttered something under his breath, and Geralt soothed him without waking, brushing the bard's hair back from his face. The slow cadence of Geralt's heartbeat never faltered.

Geralt loved Jaskier, and maybe Yen too. Eskel had once thought the Wolf wasn't capable of that depth of feeling. But Eskel was wrong.

It was Eskel that Geralt didn’t love.

Eskel turned away from Geralt and Jaskier’s tangled forms, walking alone into the darkness of a moonless night.


	9. Feral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geralt has gone years without seeing Eskel. His friend has not weathered the time well, but what’s between them is constant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: **Rough sex**. Dom/sub undertones. A bit of Subdrop, definite Top drop. Milder than the last rough sexytimes chapter, still not fantastically well-negotiated. Witcher-sweet aftercare.
> 
> I wondered if this chapter was gratuitous pwp, but I decided I wanted to explore Geralt’s perspective and the evolution of the sexual side of their relationship. If you want to skip or need more explicit warnings, I've put a summary in the end notes.
> 
> As always, because it can never be said enough, THANK YOU for your support. A couple of you lovely readers can always see straight to the heart of what I'm worried about at any given time, and I appreciate you so much for that.

The familiar scent of sword oil and chaos snapped Geralt’s attention from the wilted vegetables in front of him to the crowd ebbing and flowing through the marketplace.

 _Eskel_.

Without a backwards glance, Geralt left the farmer’s stand and thrust himself back into the crush of humanity. He kept his nose up and flared as he scented the air for another hint of his friend. It was there, stronger than before, his natural scent edged with a combination of anger/fear/loneliness that spelled the worst kind of desperation.

“I paid for a night,” Eskel said. His voice was coming from in front of the brothel, where an empty space had opened in the bustle of traffic.

“Aye, before I had a good look at ye’,” a stout woman with a sneering face said.

Geralt pushed his way into the space. Eskel whirled to face him, his hand twitching towards his sword hilts.

Caught up in Yennefer’s drama and Jaskier’s adventures, it had been years since Geralt had made it back to Kaer Morhen for the winter, years since he’d since he’d seen Eskel. Time had not been kind to him. His broad face had deflated, hanging off his cheekbones and sinking into deep depressions around his eyes. He was pale, the seams of scar tissue cleaving his cheek as angry and red as the day he got them. The armor hanging from his shoulders was cracked and dirty, swallowing his shrunken frame.

“Esk,” Geralt greeted him.

Eskel’s snarled lip peeled further back from his teeth.

“He weren’t hurtin’ anyone, madame,” one of the scantily clad women in the doorway behind him said.

“He were hurtin’ my business with that ugly face o’ his,” the madame replied. “Get him gone, white-one, ‘fore I call the guard on him.”

“I paid double, and for dinner,” Eskel said through gritted teeth. Eskel’s scarred face had put him even farther outside the fold of humanity than most witchers, left him starved for skin on skin contact and occasionally just plain starved.

The madame leered at Eskel. “So you say. I don’t see anyone ‘as can confirm your story.”

Eskel growled. Geralt knew it was a defensive reaction, knew Eskel was feeling the weight of two dozen eyes and half a dozen sword hands hovering over their hilts in the crowd behind him. But to an outsider, his gap-lipped snarl was nothing but threatening.

“Come on,” Geralt said to Eskel. “I’ve got a place.” The contract he’d taken yesterday included ‘accommodation’ in a storage area piled high with packing crates and unused furniture.

With a final scowl at the brothel’s madame, Eskel whirled. He clamped one hand around Geralt’s bicep. Geralt used the grip to tether Eskel to him as he pushed through the crowd, dragging him across the marketplace and into a narrow, dirty side alley.

Eskel crushed him face-first into the grimy bricks of the wall as soon as they were partially hidden from the main street. He buried his nose in Geralt’s neck, burrowing past his hair and using his teeth to tear at Geralt’s collar until he reached skin.

Geralt held very still as Eskel scented him with his teeth latched onto his shoulder. He had half a dozen overlapping scars in that place from past encounters. On long nights on the Path, when winter at Kaer Morhen seemed a lifetime away, Geralt pressed his fingers into the marks when he took himself in hand.

“Not here,” Geralt said as Eskel began to pull at his clothes.

Eskel growled in his ear and sank his teeth a little deeper, not quite breaking the skin. Geralt slammed his elbow back into Eskel’s side, driving the breath out of his lungs, and shimmied out of his grip to jog deeper into the alley.

Geralt had to get them behind a locked door before someone saw Eskel like this. Geralt knew that Eskel needed to grind away his sharp edges on the nearest dull object before he tore himself up instead, but he doubted anyone else would understand.

Eskel snatched Geralt up again as soon as they got through the door to the storage area. Geralt twisted in his arms, turning enough to kick the door shut and latch it before he was yanked away and slammed face down on the nearest flat surface.

“You running from me?” Eskel asked, rubbing a possessive hand over Geralt’s backside.

“Never.” Geralt never turned Eskel away, no matter how feral he was when he crashed back into Geralt’s life.

“Tell me to stop,” Eskel ordered, as he always did, daring Geralt to make him the monster he believed himself to be in his darkest moments.

“Never,” Geralt repeated.

“You smell of them,” Eskel said, leaning down to whisper the words into the skin beneath Geralt’s ear. “The witch and the bard.”

“Always do, a little.” He’d spent too much time with them over the years, sharing baths, accommodations, and laundry; their scents had seeped into everything he owned.

Eskel licked a stripe up the side of Geralt’s neck, tracing a line between his mark on Geralt’s shoulder and his hammering pulse point. “You won’t smell like them when I’m done with you,” Eskel promised like a man swearing a blood oath. 

Geralt shuddered at the warm breath over his damp skin, blinking away the sparks clouding his vision.

“You should hate me for this.” Eskel’s hand moved to the small of Geralt’s back, holding his hips down on the rough wood of the table while he wrenched at the buckles on Geralt’s armor, then pulled his undershirt over his head.

“I can’t,” Geralt said. Unforeseen bonus side effect of being unable to care about Eskel, he couldn’t hate him either. “Could never hate you.”

“Shut up.”

Geralt shut his mouth with a click. He’d learned to hold his tongue and hide his expression behind the curtain of his hair; Eskel couldn’t cope with softness when he was wild with self-hatred and need, not even the stunted softness Geralt barely managed to produce. He toed off his boots just in time for Eskel to rip his trousers and smalls off his legs, leaving him naked on the table beneath Eskel’s armored body.

“Tell me to stop,” Eskel whispered as he draped himself over Geralt, the weight of all that muscle and steel bearing him down into the unyielding surface below. The points of Eskel’s spiked pauldrons dug into Geralt’s bare skin, the buckle on his belt scraped Geralt’s spine, his codpiece forced apart Geralt’s cheeks. Geralt bucked beneath the sensations grounding him in his own body, too much and not enough all at once.

One of Eskel’s hands scraped down Geralt’s side to his hip bone.

“Wait,” Geralt gasped. He opened his hand to reveal the bottle of oil he’d palmed the moment he’d smelled Eskel.

Eskel froze above him. Geralt struggled to breathe under his weight, his dick twitching where it was caught between his body and the table.

With a growl, Eskel ripped the bottle from Geralt’s hand. Geralt began to fight a little harder against Eskel’s weight, he needed to be able to ride tomorrow damn it, but the pop of the cork coming out of the bottle settled him again.

Eskel rolled to the side, baring Geralt’s ass. His slippery fingers wasted no time finding Geralt’s hole.

Geralt jolted against the intrusion. He never turned Eskel away, but he never really submitted either. That wasn’t what Eskel wanted. He wanted to fuck into him with the barest of preparation, to revel in the feel of Geralt’s body giving way for him.

Eskel never asked what Geralt wanted when he was like this, but that was ok. Geralt only wanted to give Eskel what he needed.

A second finger entered him, scissoring him open. Geralt twisted his hips until Eskel clamped both legs around one of Geralt’s thighs. He fisted his free hand in Geralt’s hair and forced his back to arch. Eskel’s teeth closed around his neck, perilously close to the artery there, and Geralt froze.

He whined at the third finger but could do little more than shudder in Eskel’s grip.

Eskel unlatched his teeth from Geralt’s neck and licked the new mark he’d left. “Tell me to stop,” he said. His dick was against Geralt’s hole now, wide and flaring.

Geralt twitched his head in the barest of refusals, stopped by the hand still in clamped in his hair. He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood as the skin of his scalp screamed in protest. One of his hands jumped to his head, pulling weakly on Eskel’s fist at his nape. 

“Esk—” he cut off the complaint but couldn’t quite force himself to drop his hand away.

Eskel grunted and shifted his grip, letting go of Geralt’s hair and wrapping his arm around Geralt’s throat instead to keep him arched. Geralt had a moment of mindless, shaky relief, then Eskel drove into him with an agonizingly slow, relentless thrust. Geralt’s bare feet scrabbled at the rough wood of the floor as he was speared open.

“This is what I am,” Eskel panted. He paused, giving Geralt a moment to adjust, waiting for his wobbly nod before he started pumping into him, drawing almost all the way out before ramming in hard enough to slap his balls against Geralt’s. The friction of the wood grain rubbing against Geralt’s dick set him writhing again.

Eskel reached down and hooked his hand under one of Geralt’s knees. He dragged Geralt’s leg up, gripping the edge of the table with Geralt’s knee hooked over his wrist, taking the last of Geralt’s leverage and spreading him open even wider.

Geralt could do nothing but hang there and accept whatever Eskel did to him, his body buzzing as if Eskel was pouring chaos into it with every thrust. He clung with both hands to Eskel’s forearm around his throat, pulling down on the crook of Eskel’s elbow and throwing his head back against the other man’s shoulder to give himself space to breathe. Eskel’s arm slid lower to wrap around Geralt’s collarbones, his hold less and less choking and more like an embrace from behind. Between the friction on Geralt’s dick and the warm crackling on his skin as he was wrapped entirely in Eskel, Geralt didn’t last long. An orgasm tore through him as if it had been ripped from him.

“Tell me to stop!” Eskel ordered. He let go of Geralt’s neck and Geralt collapsed back onto the table twitching. When Eskel braced his free hand beside Geralt’s shoulder, Geralt wrapped his fingers around Eskel’s wrist. Eskel kept thrusting. 

Salt water scented the air. A teardrop landed on Geralt’s face, trailing across his cheek as if he’d been the one to cry it. Another followed. Geralt tightened his hold on Eskel’s wrist as his over-sensitized body shook.

“Please, tell me,” Eskel said into the nape of Geralt’s neck. Geralt tapped his index finger three times on the inside of Eskel’s wrist. _Tap tap tap._

Eskel came with a gasp. He collapsed over Geralt’s back, shaking as he spent. When he finally stopped twitching, he slid out of Geralt and fell to the floor with a clank.

Geralt panted into the tabletop. He became aware of the chill of the room, the wetness creeping down the back of his legs.

How alone and vulnerable he was, naked and bent over the edge of the table.

His post orgasm shakes had been tapering off, but his limbs began to shudder and twitch anew. He tried to organize his body into movement, he just wanted to curl up in the corner until he felt normal again, but trying to get his feet under him jarred an involuntary hiss loose.

“Wolf?” Eskel asked from the floor. A warm hand wrapped around one of his ankles. Geralt twitched in his hold, not certain if he wanted more or less of Eskel’s touch.

“Fucking shit,” Eskel said. “What have I done? Every fucking time.”

The scrape of boots on wood was Eskel getting to his feet. A cloak landed over Geralt’s shaking body, the warm scent of Eskel surrounding him and cutting the musky stench of come. Geralt let out a shuddering breath. Eskel would take care of him, Eskel always took care of him.

When he surfaced next, Geralt was curled into the smallest space his body could occupy on Eskel’s bedroll, smelling clean and a little like Eskel. Eskel was wrapped entirely around him.

He was crying into Geralt’s neck.

“My turn,” Geralt ground out. He fished around until he found one of Eskel’s hands, then pressed it to his own sternum.

“Wh—what?” Eskel asked. He didn’t give Geralt a chance to answer. “Sweet Melitele, Wolf. I’m so sorry.”

“Nothing to forgive,” Geralt said. He wished he were better at this, the giving comfort part of their frantic coupling. Jaskier had tried to teach him, but comfort just wasn’t in Geralt’s nature.

“But—but I hurt you, again. I hurt you every time!” He ran his fingers over Geralt’s head, lightly massaging the abused skin of his scalp.

Geralt made a sound that was embarrassingly like a purr, arching into the touch. “Mmmm. I’m not complaining.”

“Why do you let me do this to you? You’re stronger than me, faster than me. You shouldn’t let me do this to you.”

“I like it, obviously.”

Eskel let out a shuddering laugh that sounded more like a sob. “We’re so fucked.”

“I’m well fucked, for sure.” He wiggled his ass against Eskel’s hips suggestively.

This time Eskel’s laugh was less distorted. “Gods, I’ve missed you.”

“I—” Geralt couldn’t miss Eskel “—I’ll always find you,” he promised. He uncurled a little, tangling his legs with Eskel’s as he unfolded. Dust motes danced in the light of a window set near the ceiling, their little nest amongst the unwanted and forgotten things filling with golden afternoon sunlight.

“Why?” Eskel asked sometime later.

“Hmm?”

“Why…why do you like it?”

It should make Geralt feel bad to be used this way, he knew that. Maybe the mutations had broken that in him too. But curled up in Eskel’s arms now, he couldn’t feel anything but satisfied.

“This is good,” Geralt said with a shrug.

“This is not that,” Eskel argued. “You shouldn’t have to do that to get this.”

Geralt did not point out that he very much did have to do that to get this, that Eskel only touched him this way when they were coming down from rough sex. It was true, but it was not the only reason he never turned Eskel away.

Eskel’s unrestrained strength bearing down on Geralt made him feel fragile, human, and less alone. Eskel, who was sweet and good and kind, needed to carve control over his life out of Geralt’s skin. Knowing the depth of that ravenous darkness inside Eskel only made him more real, more touchable, for a broken thing like Geralt. 

Besides, laying there aching in Eskel’s arms while his best friend cried into his neck, he knew the true shape of what lay between them, knew it in a soul-deep way, wordless and instinctive.

“You would stop, if I asked you to,” Geralt said.

“You sound so sure,” Eskel whispered. He gently set his teeth on the bruised skin of Geralt’s shoulder.

Geralt reached up to flick Eskel’s nose, then tapped the back of the hand on his sternum.

_Tap tap tap._

“I am sure,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the narration at some points in this chapter, it may appear that I'm kink shaming. That's not my intention. It's more an issue of what Geralt thinks he should feel, and as we know, he is ass-backwards on that. 
> 
> Short summary: Caught up in Yennefer and Jaskier, Geralt has not seen Eskel in a while. Eskel is touch-starved and thin, and has been rejected by a brothel. His desperation for connection manifests as rough sex with Geralt and is clearly more of a continuation of a pattern than a one-time deal. Geralt does not explicitly consent, though he knows what he's getting into, wants to get into it, and mostly enjoys throughout. When he's not enjoying, Eskel responds to Geralt's discomfort and adjusts, probably without realizing he's doing it. After, Geralt admits to himself that he never turns Eskel away not just because he likes the cuddling but also because he likes the sex itself, the opportunity to feel vulnerable. And Eskel's desperation only makes him more real to Geralt. He reassures Eskel that he knows Eskel would stop, if Geralt asked him to.


	10. Destiny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Destiny has plans for Geralt, and maybe for Eskel. Neither of them are particularly good at recognizing it though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Not much. Amnesia, I guess? Eskel's continued idiocy, definitely. 
> 
> Woo! Alright, you all are awesome. Thanks for bearing with me on what should definitely have been tagged "slow burn". We shall now make some incremental progress, and then...not do that. Sorry!?! I can only hope it continues to hurt in a good way, I suppose. I promise an ending so happy you'll wonder if someone else wrote it.

They showed up to Kaer Morhen on foot, wounded inside and out, Ciri wearing her trauma in the pinched corners around her eyes and Geralt wearing his across his slumped shoulders. Ciri was a child of no more than 13 at the time, her bearing cycling through regal and commanding to feral and back again in lurching, unpredictable spurts. Between that and her pale hair, Eskel felt as if he was facing a petite, female version of the young White Wolf.

“The lion cub of Cintra, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon,” Geralt said, his cracked-gravel voice even rougher than usual with weariness and pain. He limped the last few steps through the gate and wobbled, his leg threatening to collapse out from under him. Ciri held onto his sleeve with both hands.

“Uh. Hello?” Eskel said. He didn’t know what to do with the most important orphan on the continent, so he stepped up Geralt’s other side and slung Geralt’s arm across his shoulders, taking as much weight as Geralt would relinquish.

Ciri watched with wide, otherworldly green eyes. Her fingers went white-knuckled with the force of her grip on her guardian.

“This is Eskel,” Geralt told her with just the hint of a smile. It peeled a decade off his face, and Eskel found his own smile widening in response.

“Of nowhere in particular,” Eskel said, turning the good side of his face to the princess.

“He’s safe,” Geralt told her, gesturing around vaguely, “Home.”

The girl’s eyes shuttled back and forth between Geralt and Eskel. A smile wobbled onto her face and she tipped her head and bent her knees in a brief, elegant curtsey at odds with the dirt smeared across her nose.

Eskel hitched Geralt a little higher on his shoulder. “Wow, thanks. ‘Safe’. Not ‘handsome’ or ‘a powerful magic user’, just ‘safe’.”

“Not just safe,” Ciri said. Her eyes glowed as they searched Eskel’s face. “Home.”

“Hmm,” Geralt agreed around a massive yawn.

The door to the keep banged open and Geralt’s body went rigid against Eskel. Ciri’s smile disappeared as if blasted away with Aard.

Vesemir marched into the courtyard with Lambert trailing along behind him looking confused.

Geralt dragged himself off Eskel’s shoulder and tucked Ciri behind Eskel.

“Eskel’s safe,” Geralt repeated, not looking away from Vesemir.

He began to stomp across the courtyard toward their mentor, gathering anger around himself like a cloak and drawing strength from it. By the time they met in the middle of the yard, he vibrated with dangerous energy, his lips skinned back from his teeth and his hands balled into fists.

“You will not touch her,” he spat at Vesemir, quiet enough that Ciri would not hear it.

She must have understood enough from the intensity of his posture to be spooked, because a delicate hand was slipped into Eskel’s calloused mitt.

“Brought her here for safety, for training and guidance, didn’t you?” Vesemir asked, his tone equally low.

“Yes, for safety,” Geralt bit off, gesturing at Eskel behind him. Eskel twitched. “And you will learn what that means, for perhaps the first time in your life.”

Vesemir rocked back on his heels. His face was corpse blank.

“No starvation as punishment,” Geralt ordered. “No whippings, no trials, and _no mutations._ ”

Eskel carefully closed his fingers around the fine-boned little hand placed in his, feeling his stomach drop at the very thought.

“I second that,” he called across the space between them.

“And I third it, as if it even fucking needs to be said,” Lambert added, shaking his head.

“It needs to be said,” Geralt said. He loomed over Vesemir. Eskel had never noticed before that he was taller than the elder witcher.

Vesemir took a step back. “You are her guardian.”

“I am,” Geralt said. “To hurt her, you’ll have to go through me.”

“I won’t hurt her,” Vesemir said. His hands flapped at his sides once before he stilled the motion. “I will help.”

“I’m not convinced you know the difference,” Geralt said, but he was deflating, his energy spent.

“Come on,” Eskel said, giving Ciri’s hand a gentle tug. “Let’s find you a room, before your father passes out in the courtyard.”

*

Ciri blossomed in Geralt’s care. It surprised no one more than Geralt, who watched with open disbelief as his daughter danced through sword forms with Eskel and mused about court politics with Vesemir.

“I wish you wouldn’t look so surprised,” Eskel told him as Lambert taught Ciri the basics of potion brewing at the kitchen hearth. She was picking it up quickly and giving Lambert as much shit as he could take in the process.

“This is mandrake root,” Lambert said. “One of my favorites.”

“Makes sense,” Ciri said. “Peasants in Cintra brew it into several potions for male virility.”

“That’s not why I…how do you even know that?” Lambert asked, horrified. Ciri just stared up at him with innocent eyes.

It was glorious.

“You’re a good guardian,” Eskel told Geralt. They were side by side on a bench, seated a few tables away so they could supervise the two least-respectable members of the Kaer Morhen pack from a discreet distance. “She’s a different girl from the one you rode in with two months ago.”

“Come on, Esk,” Geralt said, waving at the princess. “No way this is my doing. She’s just a good kid.”

“She is,” Eskel agreed, “But—”

Ciri darted across the kitchen, an iridescent green potion cradled in her grubby hands. “Is it good, Geralt? Uncle Vesemir says you have the best sense of smell.”

Geralt twitched a little at Vesemir’s name, but it was more residual than anything. Their mentor had taken Geralt’s warning to what was left of his blackened heart and had been as gentle and careful with the princess as Geralt was himself. Eskel had even caught him pretending to fall asleep during book lessons so Ciri could sneak off and train with Geralt.

Taking the vial and holding it up to his nose, Geralt flared his nostrils. Eskel smothered a smile. Geralt could probably smell the exact composition of this brew from his bedroom three stories away.

“It’s perfect, cub,” Geralt told her, putting one hand on her thin shoulder, and giving it a little squeeze.

Ciri threw herself into his chest and wrapped his arms around his neck. Geralt only hesitated a moment before returning the embrace, hugging her back as if she were made from glass instead of skinned knees and frenetic energy.

She danced away smiling, off to seek Vesemir for more bestiary studies, the potion completely forgotten in Geralt’s hand.

Lambert came over and took it from him, giving it a sniff. “It is good. She’s good.”

“See,” Geralt said to Eskel. “If she can learn something from Lambert—”

“Hey, fuck you.”

“—then she’s just good.” His face was lit from within, glowing with pride.

“Do you love her?” Eskel asked, knowing the answer from the awestruck look in Geralt’s eyes and wondering if he could admit it.

“I—” Geralt stopped and started again with a tight voice “—I don’t think I can.”

“I think you’re an idiot,” Lambert said.

“I think you already do love her,” Eskel said, punching Lambert’s side, because he was also an idiot for not seeing how much this conversation was costing Geralt.

“I—” Geralt sucked in a deep breath and let it out through his teeth “—Yes. I do.”

“Yes, you do,” Lambert said, rubbing his side. “And it’s like really, really obvious. Dumbass.”

“You love her and you give her space to be herself.” Eskel shrugged. “Got the important stuff down.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said. He tilted his head at Eskel, then leaned into his space and wrapped him in a sideways hug, dropping his chin to Eskel’s shoulder briefly. “Thank you.”

Eskel blinked and found his arms so he could put them around Geralt in return. “For what? What’s _this_ for?”

“Giving us space to be ourselves,” Geralt said. He squeezed a little tighter and then let go. Standing, he went to Lambert and hugged him too.

“The fuck?” Lambert squawked.

Geralt grinned and jumped back, ducking Lambert’s half-hearted punch. He gave them both a jaunty salute and headed out of the kitchen towards the stable.

“The fuck,” Lambert repeated, staring after Geralt.

Eskel grinned. Yennefer had made Geralt harder and Jaskier had made him softer, but Ciri…Ciri made him unafraid to be either. Eskel loved her for it.

* * *

Geralt died again a decade later.

Eskel found him wandering in the woods beneath the keep.

“People saw you die,” he told the shirtless apparition of his best friend standing barefoot in the snow. “Run through by a peasant’s pitchfork in the middle of a pogrom.”

“I remember nothing,” Geralt said. He tilted his head to the side, staring down the length of Eskel’s blade. “Where am I?”

Eskel lowered his sword. It didn’t matter what this creature was, Eskel couldn’t kill it, not when it had Geralt’s shape.

“You’re among friends. Whoa!” Eskel lurched forward just in time to catch Geralt as he collapsed. His bare skin was glacier cold, colder even than the night air. “I gotta go get a cart, can’t drag you up the Killer like this.”

“…Do I want to go up the killer?” Geralt asked.

Eskel snorted into his hair. He smelled exactly like Geralt, a lot like alchemy and a little like wet dog, with just the faintest undercurrent of horse.

“Yes, home is up the Killer,” Eskel told him, trying to lower him to the ground. Geralt clung to him with surprising strength for a man well past hypothermic.

“I don’t want you to leave me,” Geralt said with dead certainty. His voice was still metal-file-across-your-teeth rough, but it had lost its droning intonation.

“Yeah, I got that.” Eskel launched a gout of Igni skyward, fire and sparks pouring out of his hand in a mushroom shaped cloud. “That ought to bring Vesemir and Lambert running.”

“Would bring anyone running,” Geralt said. His eyes were very round, fixed on Eskel’s face like he might disappear if Geralt blinked.

“I’d apologize for scaring you, but you can’t be scared, so…” Eskel shrugged. He rubbed one hand over his scarred cheek and hoisted Geralt a little closer with the other. 

“I was scared,” Geralt said. Eskel’s stomach twisted at the naked honesty on his face. “Not of you though. You’re pretty great.”

“You’ve known me for two minutes.”

“The best two minutes of my life so far.”

“That’s…sweet. Like ten times too sweet for you. I think you might be a shapeshifter.”

Geralt reached out and lifted Eskel’s medallion from his chest. Eskel stilled his instinctive urge to jerk away. No one touched a witcher’s medallion, not even other witchers.

“Guess you’re not a shapeshifter,” he said to the top of Geralt’s head.

“I have one of these.” Geralt poked his own medallion. “It’s different though.”

“Yeah, you messed mine up like three quarters of a century ago. Put some sort of half-baked protection spell on it without my permission, like the ass you are.”

“Weird thing to be mad about.” Geralt shuddered against Eskel.

Rolling his eyes, Eskel peeled Geralt’s fingers off his jacket and leaned him on the nearest tree.

“Stay,” he ordered as he began to strip out of layers.

Geralt tilted his head again but stayed obediently propped up on the tree. “Not a dog,” he observed.

“We’re still debating that.”

Eskel laid his coat on the ground, shoved Geralt onto it, and began dragging underbrush together. He didn’t bother gathering much, he just needed enough fuel to keep them warm until help arrived. When he had a sizeable pile, he set it alight with another Igni and sank down on his coat next to Geralt.

“See,” Geralt said, “Pretty fucking great.”

“You have pitifully low standards, Wolf. Always have.” He’d always put up with the worst bits of Eskel, after all. Eskel threw an arm around Geralt and pulled him close, so that his icy chest was pressed to Eskel’s warm one. He gathered Geralt’s errant limbs, tucking his hands between them and his legs around Eskel’s hips so he was halfway in Eskel’s lap. Geralt dropped his forehead to Eskel’s shoulder with an undeniably content sigh.

Eskel shook his head. He was probably cuddling something undead, but he could no more push Geralt away than sprout wyvern wings.

“I am sorry,” Geralt said.

“For what?” Eskel asked.

“You’re mad at me. Don’t know why.”

“I mourned you. Again,” Eskel told the shadows over Geralt’s shoulder. Three years of grief and longing, this time mourning a man he’d just started to know.

Geralt blinked, his eyelashes brushing Eskel’s neck. His fingers moved on Eskel’s sternum. _Tap tap tap._

Eskel frowned at the gesture, a familiar quirk of the Wolf’s often wordless communication style so old Eskel had lost its origin in the quagmire of his childhood memories. 

“I am sorry,” Geralt repeated.

“I don’t think you can be,” Eskel said. Geralt never gave an apology and he never asked for one. It just wasn’t a concept he understood.

“Pretty sure I am.” Geralt yawned. “It’ll be ok now. I found you.”

Eskel’s breath stuttered. Geralt had promised that once, but if he remembered nothing…“Were you looking for me?”

“It would seem so. Unrelated question. Is that a dagger in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

“It’s a dagger.”

Geralt honest-to-gods chuckled. “Damn.”

Lambert found them like that, wrapped around each other like vines, shivering in the dying light of Eskel’s meager fire.

“Eskel. What the fuck have you done?” Lambert asked.

Geralt hissed over Eskel’s shoulder at Lambert, producing Eskel’s knife to brandish at him. The youngest wolf recoiled in surprise, hand hovering over his sword hilt.

“It’s him, Lambert.” Eskel laughed and hugged Geralt a little tighter. “It’s really him.”

*

“You're leaving.”

Eskel startled, dropping Scorpion's bridle. He hadn't heard Geralt approach, but no one did these days. He'd forgotten he needed to make noise when he walked to keep from startling them.

“Yes. Like we talked about,” Eskel said, picking up and sorting out the bridle so he didn't have to look at Geralt.

“Because we don't know why I'm back, why the keep was attacked.”

Eskel grunted in agreement, not trusting himself to answer aloud. Despite not remembering anything or anyone, Geralt was remarkably adept at reading the wolves, particularly Eskel.

“Thought we'd leave together.”

“You've got no reason to think that.” Eskel slid Scorpion’s bridle up his nose and over his ears, watching Geralt from the corner of his eyes.

Geralt frowned, the expression not human-emotive but still sitting strangely on the normally smooth plains of his face.

Eskel looked away. He hadn't been able to look at Geralt straight on for days.

“You're running from me,” Geralt said.

“No, I'm not.”

There was amusement in Geralt's voice, threaded around the sadness. “Liar. Why?”

“I—You—It’s just, you're not the man I thought you were.”

“Not... Geralt? Not your Wolf?” He still had trouble with his name, had yet to answer to it. Or to Eskel's nickname, for that matter.

“Not either,” Eskel confirmed. He turned to go and get the last of his saddlebags, he’d tucked them discreetly behind some packing crates, and found them cradled in Geralt's arms.

That was the worst part of it all. Geralt knew Eskel, even without his memories. And Eskel knew Geralt. Amnesia hadn't made him a stranger, it made him achingly familiar, a confusing hybrid of extremes. He was feral but adoring, slow to anger and quick to offer aid.

Eskel took the bags without a word, slinging them over Scorpion's back and leading him from his stall. Geralt fell in beside him. Eskel tried to ignore the heat radiating from his unarmored body, and mostly failed.

In front of the gate, Geralt stopped Eskel from mounting with a hand on his shoulder.

“What—”

Geralt embraced him, snaking his arms around Eskel's waist, tucking himself close to Eskel’s chest and hiding his face in Eskel's collar. Eskel's arms wrapped around him in response, the movement happening without conscious thought, despite the wrenching twist of his stomach that accompanied it.

The tenderness hurt Eskel in ways violence never could, confirming his worst fears. Every assumption he’d made about Geralt’s nature had been bullshit, garbage he’d been fed by their teachers and the mages and then regurgitated obediently. The second round of mutations had changed Geralt fundamentally, remade his face and his hair and his emotional workings, but that had only been the beginning. Geralt had learned to hide what was left of himself from the people who would hurt him for it. He’d learned to hide from Eskel. Now, in his death-induced amnesia, he had forgotten that he should.

“Thought we were together,” Geralt said. His voice was muffled, but unmistakably tight with pain.

“Not in the way you mean.” Eskel folded him a little closer. “You don’t want me like that.”

“I—I think you’re wrong.”

“You don’t remember.” He pulled away gently, forcing himself to meet Geralt's eyes for the first time that day.

They were unfocused, his brows furrowed. He looked like a man prodding a sore tooth with his tongue as he dug around in his mind.

“I—can't?” Geralt asked, more pain crinkling his forehead.

“You don't.”

“You're sure?” His fingertips ticked three times on Eskel's chest as he refocused on Eskel's face.

“I—” he studied the patch of silvery chest hair revealed by Geralt's shirt. “I'm not sure.”

Geralt remembered nothing and no one, but he was a creature of his instincts still. He felt a strong connection to Triss and found all of Lambert's well-practiced assholery benignly hilarious, much to the dark-haired Witcher's chagrin. Around Vesemir he was near-silent, never turning his back and always keeping himself between the older man and anyone else.

And to Eskel, he clung like a pale shadow. He followed the scarred witcher from room to room, head tilted like an interested dog as he watched Eskel maintain their weapons, take care of the animals, and prepare meals. Eskel went out of his way to see the white-haired witcher to bed in his own room, only to wake in the middle of the night to find Geralt asleep on the bed next to him, usually just touching him somehow, the tips of his fingers grazing Eskel’s hip or his forehead pressed to the side of Eskel’s shoulder.

“We could find out.” Geralt gave him a little half smile, trying to catch his eyes. He reached to touch Eskel's scarred cheek with tentative fingertips.

Eskel let him, leaning into the soft touch on the worst of himself just once. “There are other people in your life, people you love unambiguously and unreservedly. You’ll see.”

“You’re an idiot,” Geralt snarled, his fingers still feather-light on Eskel’s skin.

“Very definitely.” Eskel had already lost Geralt, lost him to other lovers, his own violence, and time itself. There had never been a bigger idiot. “I gave up on you too soon.”

“So you’re giving up on me again.”

Eskel winced. “No, I—”

“You are. And you are wrong.” His fingers tapped on Eskel’s cheek, softly. _Tap tap tap._ “Stay with me.”

This man, who was making himself small in Eskel’s arms, touching his ugliest parts with such affection, this was who Eskel had been abusing for a century. He couldn't stay, he couldn’t even look Geralt in the eye without guilt tying his stomach in knots.

Eskel disentangled himself from Geralt and mounted up. “They treat you so much better than I did. You’re going to remember.”

“I’m going to forgive you.” Geralt gave Eskel’s stirrup three sharp yanks, then let go and took a few steps back.

Eskel frowned at his sudden capitulation. “You’re letting me go?”

Geralt didn’t answer. His arms had dropped to his sides to hang there limply, his face granite still and his eyes hollow as he stared blankly at the cobbles beneath Scorpion’s hooves. It hurt more than the tenderness had.

“We’ll figure it out,” Eskel said. He just needed time to get his head on straight, time to see if Geralt would still tolerate him, once he'd put his memories back together. “When everything calms down, I’ll find you. I promise.”

Geralt lifted his eyes from the cobbles to Eskel’s face, but they stayed distant and unfocused. “And do you keep your promises, Eskel of nowhere in particular?”

Eskel kicked Scorpion into motion without answering.


	11. Conditioning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier helps Geralt explore the edges of his own mind and extracts a promise. Geralt fails to keep it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Spoilers for Netflix folks, mentions of past torture (the trials), biiiig misunderstanding
> 
> So, it seems we like our angst! I really appreciate all your ~~agonized cries~~ supportive comments! Anyway, all teasing aside, it is so, so valuable to know how a chapter is being perceived. So thank you!!! As a treat, a sweet interlude, some answers and then, well. Angst! 
> 
> I'm totes smashing together canons now, folks, apologies.

“Gods, you’re good at that,” Jaskier said as he collapsed face down on the bed.

Geralt smiled at the back of Jaskier’s head and rose to get a wet cloth to clean them up. Once he’d carefully cleaned the sweat and oil from Jaskier and swiped at himself cursorily, he flopped on his back beside the bard.

Jaskier immediately rolled over and sprawled on Geralt’s chest. Geralt tucked a few errant strands of hair, now more gray then chestnut, behind his ear.

“I couldn’t be moved for money or power,” Jaskier said.

“What about breakfast?”

“Alright, maybe breakfast. Eventually.” Jaskier yawned and settled into a doze.

Geralt closed his eyes and let his senses expand. A bell rang in the distance, marking the end of the current class period, and the sound of a couple hundred students moving between courses swelled around them. It reminded Geralt of Kaer Morhen, the sound of children talking and teasing apparently transcended time and race, though it had been many years since Eskel and Geralt had rough-housed with their brothers as they scampered between the practice yard and their lessons.

Shifting his shoulders, Geralt sighed. It had been a long time since he’d made it back to Kaer Morhen, too caught in assassination plots (thanks, Letho), race wars and trying to put his fractured memories back together. Maybe he should have sent a message? After all, Geralt worried when Eskel didn’t make it back to the keep.

Jaskier ran his fingers over the crest of Geralt’s hip, a reverent, intimate touch so unlike either Yennefer or Eskel, who demanded of Geralt with their hands and bodies. They were his friends, his family, and more than that, bonded to him by shared pain. But they were not his _lovers_ , not like Jaskier was. Eskel had been right about that, at least.

Geralt sighed again. Eskel wouldn’t worry about him. He’d been pretty clear about wanting space.

“You know, depressed is generally not the mood I aim to leave my lovers with,” Jaskier said.

Geralt opened his eyes to find Jaskier’s ocean-blue gaze locked on his face.

“It’s not you,” Geralt said. “It’s me.”

“Unless you’re breaking up with me, probably not a good place to start a conversation.”

“What? No!” Geralt dragged Jaskier up his chest so he could crush a kiss onto his lips. “No.”

“Good.” Jaskier sounded a little winded, and the warmth in Geralt’s chest expanded. He did that, he made the bard breathless.

They settled back onto the bed, Jaskier’s head a little higher on Geralt’s shoulder.

“It’s ok to miss him,” Jaskier said.

“Who?”

“Don’t play dumb, my dear one, it doesn’t suit you.” Jaskier turned his head and plunked a kiss on top of the overlapping scars Eskel’s teeth had left on Geralt’s shoulder. “Eskel.”

Geralt shuddered at the softness of Jaskier’s lips on the secret written on his skin. “It’s not like that. I don’t miss him; I can’t miss him.”

“I’m a bit of an expert in your pining face,” Jaskier said. His half smile was equal parts sadness and joy.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to figure out I wanted this,” Geralt said. Fifteen years ago, it would have taken a team of wild horses to drag that admission from him, but human lives were short and they didn’t have that kind of time anymore.

“I don’t blame you,” Jaskier said. His fingers were playing scales on Geralt’s sternum as he talked. “I used to hate you for it, sometimes. But not now.”

“What changed?”

“You. Me. The world, and how I perceived it. Love can be constant, but it can never be unchanging, not if it’s to survive.”

“You’re a poet.” Geralt pressed a kiss to the top of Jaskier’s head.

“Quite literally a published poet, yes, thank you for noticing.”

Jaskier’s fingers moved from his sternum up to Eskel’s mark. Geralt sucked in a deep breath and went very still as Jaskier traced the marred skin.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not…No?”

“Hurt inside, maybe?”

Geralt huffed. “Not a child.”

“I know. I’m rather convinced you never had a chance to be, and therefore haven’t had much practice with some of the fundamentals. Thus my question.” Jaskier tapped the scars once with his index finger.

Geralt squirmed under the touch.

“You don’t have to be ashamed of them,” Jaskier said.

“I’m not.” Geralt was sure of that at least. The scars Eskel left on his skin were the only ones on his body that didn’t remind him of what he was, a monster hunting freak, so much as who he was as a person and a friend. They were tangible marks of something he did right that he could carry with him when everything else was stripped away. He shrugged out from under Jaskier’s hand. “They’re Eskel’s.”

“Sorry,” Jaskier said, running a soothing hand down Geralt’s side. “I’m sorry. You can tell me to fuck off at any point now. Or you can tell me what’s bothering you.”

They lay quietly while Jaskier waited for Geralt to decide how much he wanted to share. Geralt took a moment to appreciate the man Jaskier had become, who gave him the space he needed to change, to grow into an answer. The noise around them died away, the campus hushing as the students settled into their next lessons.

“We aren’t like that,” Geralt began again, but he couldn’t get any further.

“You were though. What happened?” Jaskier whispered.

“He lost me.” Geralt swallowed hard. He didn’t talk about that time in his life, could barely remember it under the pain of the trials, the experiments, the long and lonely years since then. “When we were boys. After the experimental trials, I changed. Like you said. We’ve known each other for almost a century since then, but we can’t be that anymore.” Eskel had as good as said so.

“I’m sorry,” Jakier said. “I’m sorry you miss him.”

“It’s ok. I can’t,” Geralt said.

“Hang on, what?”

“I told you, I don’t miss him. I can’t.”

“Bullocks. You are laying here sighing over him. Besides, I think we’ve pretty well disproven that whole ‘witchers can’t feel nonsense’.”

“It’s different. I’m different. I can’t care about Eskel.”

“You care about me, don’t you?”

“Yes. I do. So much. So so much. I—” Geralt growled at himself. Weirdly, the amnesia had helped, resetting his expectations of himself and how much he could care. But he still couldn’t say the words, could barely think the words.

Jaskier kissed the mark on his shoulder again. “I know, dear heart. I know you love me. You say it with your body, with your actions. I can see it, and I can see you love Eskel the same way.”

“No,” Geralt repeated, shying away from the thought. “I can’t care about Eskel.”

“Says who? You keep saying those exact words…did someone tell you that you _can’t_ care about Eskel?”

Geralt frowned. Under all the disorganized and half-formed memories, way back in the farthest corner of his mind, there was a locked door. He skirted around it constantly, seldom acknowledged it and never, ever tried to open it. Yennefer had wanted him to once, but Geralt knew better. The door had to stay shut. He risked reaching for it now. 

Pain shot through his limbs, tensing his muscles and bowing his spine. For an agonizing moment, he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been in pain.

“Geralt? Geralt, please, come back to me. Please.”

Geralt panted. He was on his back, naked and vulnerable. Pushing Jaskier off his chest, Geralt rolled onto his side and curled into a ball to still his shaking body.

Something soft landed on his skin, feather-light and cool. It took him a long time to realize it was a silk robe.

A flower-print silk robe.

“Buttercups,” Geralt said, studying the pattern where the fabric stretched over his knees.

“There you are. I’ve never been more relieved to have my fashion sense challenged.”

Geralt glanced over his shoulder. Jaskier was laying on his side behind Geralt with red-rimmed eyes.

“You ok?” Geralt asked.

“Am I…for the love of everything sacred, I’m fine! You’re the one we’re worrying about right now. Can I put my arm around your waist?”

“Hmm.”

“That was a yes grunt, right? I can usually tell, but I don’t usually send you spiraling with a few questions.”

“I’m ok.” Geralt uncurled a little, inviting Jaskier’s touch. His nerve endings were still buzzing, but the pain was fading along with the…panic. That had been panic. Huh. He’d forgotten what that one felt like.

“No, you’re not, Geralt. I love you either way, but you are not ok. I think they did something to you.”

“Jask.”

“Right, obviously they did a number of terrible things to you. But I think they did something particularly horrible to the way you think about love.”

“They took the best parts of me,” Geralt whispered to his knees. He knew that much from past brushes with the door; it was connected to all the good thoughts and emotions he could not have.

The warm weight of Jaskier’s arm landed around his waist. “No, they didn’t. If they had, you wouldn’t be here, in my arms. You wouldn’t be my love and I wouldn’t be yours. You wouldn’t have saved a crazy sorceress from herself, raised a lion cub. You wouldn’t worry about what Eskel lost when they tortured you.”

Geralt relaxed a little, tugging on Jaskier’s arm until he draped himself over Geralt’s back.

“Oh,” Jaskier said. He relaxed, spooning up behind Geralt’s body. “Oh, this is nice.”

“Hmm,” Geralt agreed. Jaskier was about the same height as Geralt and not nearly as bulky, but Geralt still felt safe wrapped up in his arms. Perhaps it had less to do with the body of the man embracing him and more to do with who he was as a person, always guarding what was left of Geralt’s heart.

Jaskier rested his forehead on Geralt’s nape. “Remember the riddle, Eskel’s riddle? When is a person more than a person?”

“Hmm?”

“Eskel means more to you than just any person. You have said so yourself, in your own backwards way. So I want you to hold this thought lightly in your mind: you can and do care about Eskel.”

Geralt shuddered. “I can’t,” the words fell out of his mouth without thought.

Jaskier’s arms tightened. “It’s ok. You’re ok.”

“I’m not. You just said so.” He was battered and broken, with a mental abscess around Eskel that hurt almost as much as his prolonged absence from Geralt’s life.

“You will be ok, then,” Jaskier said. “You will figure it out.”

“Eskel said the same thing. Then he left.” It still hurt, years and many glancing meetings with Eskel later, hurt in a way that shouldn’t be possible for Geralt.

“Yeah, I bet that fucking sucked,” Jaskier kissed the nape of Geralt’s neck. “But the two of you, you’re as constant as...the sun and moon. Uh. Mountain ranges! Tides and...taxes."

"You're a published poet?"

"Shut up. Point is, you will figure it out.”

“When things settle down,” Geralt finished with a sigh.

“Uhm. Do things ever settle down for you?”

Geralt tried to remember a time he hadn’t been chasing his own tail in widening circles around the continent. “No.”

“Right. Then you’ll figure it out when you make time to figure it out.”

“Hmm.”

“Just promise me one thing, Geralt?”

“Anything.”

“Don’t wait too long.”

* * *

Geralt slammed into the little tavern, the howling wind outside ripping the door from his hand and giving his entrance more drama than he really wanted.

The villagers inside fell silent.

Pushing his hood back from his face, Geralt nodded at the nearest table and began to wind his way to the bar. Whispers and hurried conversations trailed after him like a cloak.

“Witcher!” the alderman greeted him, gesturing to the worn stool in the middle of the bar before resuming his idle scrubbing of the mug in his hands. “Too long since we’ve had one of your kind.”

Geralt frowned. The alderman smiled.

“I’m Jan,” the man said. “And you must be Geralt.”

Geralt’s frown deepened. The alderman smiled wider.

“I must say,” he said, “You are just like he described you.”

“Eskel,” Geralt said. He’d been chasing rumors of his friend for years, since the third and final fall of Kaer Morhen, since Eskel had stopped returning there for winter and had disappeared off the map without a trace. This was the first time in months Geralt had a solid lead.

“The very same.” Jan’s face fell. “Wish I had better news for you.”

He put the mug on the bar top, lowering his hands from his chest for the first time. A silver medallion hung there, wolf head proudly snarling.

“Eep,” Jan said.

Geralt blinked. He was crouched on top of the bar with one hand around the alderman’s throat, the other holding a dagger a finger’s breadth from the man’s right eye. He couldn’t remember moving to kill the alderman, but he decided it had been the right impulse when he glanced down and saw Eskel’s medallion again on the alderman’s chest.

“Yup,” Jan said, swallowing hard. “Exactly the way he described you.”

Geralt tightened his grip. “Explain.”

“The white hair, the teeth, the protective—”

“Explain. Where. Eskel is.”

“Oh. Right. Well, see, it had been awhile since he stopped by. So my lady wife—” he gestured behind him, to a woman looking on with narrowed eyes and rolling pin in her hands “—Bess went up to there to check on him. All his things were there, but he weren’t, just a note and this here medallion on the table.”

Geralt loosened his grip on the man’s neck. His heartbeat was fast, but it hadn’t sped up as he told the story. He was telling the truth.

Jan sucked in a deep breath. “Tinker passin’ through read the note for us, said it were ‘bout moving on. I ‘ad hoped he went to find you. Always told such stories about you.”

“He didn’t find me,” Geralt said, his gut dropping. Geralt had made himself easy to find on purpose. Even Lambert had turned up at Corvo Bianco twice now. When years had passed and Eskel still hadn’t, Geralt struck out to find him.

Geralt let go of Jan and pushed himself off the bar. The alderman rubbed at his throat.

“Jan, you idiot, give the witcher the trinket,” Bess said, dropping her rolling pin with a clatter that brought Geralt’s teeth back out.

The alderman pulled the chain over his head and held it out to Geralt. Eskel’s medallion spun slowly in the air between them, turning back and forth between the snarling wolf’s head and the engraved silver diamond on the back. The crystal in the center was still yellow, still tied to Eskel, but it couldn’t protect his life now. Geralt wondered if it was his life Eskel was discarding by leaving the medallion behind, or if it was Geralt.

“The note,” Geralt demanded. He pulled off his glove and took the medallion from Jan, rubbing his fingers over the elven words on the back.

“Don’t have it,” the alderman’s wife said.

“What did it say. Exactly what.”

“Can’t recall,” Jan said. “Somewhat about having nowhere to go.”

“It said he weren’t sure he had a home anywhere. That he couldn’t keep on like this anymore,” the alderman’s wife said. “There were a slide a few days ‘afore I went up there, we all heard a great booming. Wiped out them flying creatures as hunted there for good. Passin’ a year now since then.”

“No.” Geralt said. He shook his head and swept one hand down sharply in rejection.

“Continent’s big,” Jan said weakly, “Might be he’s on his way.”

Bess very, very carefully put a hand on Geralt’s shoulder. “It were a good last act, good for us. Might be, he found his way home to mother Melitele.”

Geralt stomped out of the tavern without a backwards glance. He put Eskel’s medallion over his head, tucking it under his armor and against his skin.

Even a year later, it wasn’t hard to find the still-abandoned hut on the edge of the little enclave where Eskel had been living. It was the only place in town that didn’t have fresh tracks leading to the door. The inside was dark and drab, bare walls and a bare floor relieved only by a poorly tanned bear hide rug. Nothing of Eskel remained to show he’d ever been there.

Geralt barely kept himself from burning the squalid little shack to the ground in frustration. Following a furrow in the snow that led out of town to the east, he quickly came upon the rock slide Bess had mentioned. A giant bite had been taken out of the mountainside just above the road, a prefect semi-circle carved into the rock with knife’s edge precision.

Eskel’s work. Geralt could practically taste his chaos in the air.

The road itself was buried in a pile of rock higher than Geralt’s head. In the very middle something glinted in the weak winter sun.

Geralt heaved himself up onto the uncertain footing, scrambling as icy gravel slid and stones shifted. His stomach clenched and then rose into his throat as he worked his way closer to the metal object. He fell to his knees in front of it, digging frantically at the rubble.

It was a silver sword with a simple pommel, the hilt wrapped in narrow strips of leather Geralt had cut from his own boots one particularly lean winter.

Eskel’s sword.

“No,” Geralt said again. He brushed the blade with the tips of his fingers, confirming the awful reality of it with a touch.

Geralt had waited too long. He’d been afraid of the pain that went with not loving Eskel the way he deserved, and he’d lost him entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOT ACTUAL CHARACTER DEATH. That wouldn’t be happy, would it?


	12. Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eskel is poked and prodded by basically everyone he knows until he takes a risk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Big-ish spoilers for Netflix folks, dementia in a main character (sorry)
> 
> Alright, who's ready to make some progress? Thanks for your patience as we slow burn our way through a century of will-they/won't-they. I'm honestly surprised you all are still here. So. Thank you!!!
> 
> Original summary: "Eskel finally grows a pair"

Winters at Kaer Morhen marked the years of Eskel’s life like the rings of a tree. Without them, he couldn’t measure the passage of time. He ceased to grow. But he didn’t whither either, not as he expected he would.

“Why are you still here?” Jan asked him, at the start of yet another winter in the little village. Eskel had killed a wyvern for them, accepted the use of a long-dead huntsman’s hut in payment, and never left.

“Got nowhere to go,” Eskel said, knocking back another gulp of his ale. He stretched in his seat, the worn stool in the center of the bar.

“What, ‘sides to that whole cast of characters you’ve been bending my ear about for years?”

“I’m not exactly the best of company, these days,” Eskel said.

“Shit excuse, and you know it,” Jan said, waggling his finger at Eskel.

“I’ve lost everything,” Eskel said to the bar top.

“What, ‘sides that whole cast of characters you’ve been—”

“Jan.”

“ ‘m just sayin’. If you don’t know where you should be, might try being with them that cares about you.”

“Hmm,” Eskel said. The sound came with an image of Geralts’s tiny frown-smile. The memory of his face, his glittering golden eyes, was clearer than anything Eskel could make out in the smokey air of the tavern. He dropped a few coins next to his mug and left.

Returning to his hut on the edge of town, Eskel went through the motions of preparing dinner. He lit a guttering tallow candle, got out the dead huntsman’s scuffed wooden flatware and retrieved a hunk of leaden bread from the cold box. He sat and stared down at his meal, then looked around the unadorned walls of this dead stranger’s abandoned home.

“What am I doing here?” he asked the empty space on the other side of the table.

 _Hiding in the attic,_ a voice that sounded like Vesemir responded in Eskel’s head. The hard to reach corners of Kaer Morhen’s attic were one of the few places trainees could hide from their elders. Eskel and Geralt had shared their first kiss there, on a spring day that smelled of the freshly turned earth of their brothers’ graves, over a century ago. 

“I failed you,” Eskel said to his ghosts.

 _Bullshit,_ Vesemir would have said. Geralt probably would too. Knowing Geralt, it had never even occurred to him to blame Eskel for his failure to fend off the leader of the wild hunt. In fact, Geralt probably blamed himself for the whole damn fiasco.

He might even blame himself for Eskel staying away for so long.

“Fuck,” Eskel said with a wince.

Eskel left the little hamlet the next morning.

He took the eastern road out of town. It was plagued by harpy attacks; a colony of nearly a hundred of the creatures was entrenched in the porous cliff face above the pass. Their cries mocked Eskel as he led Scorpion down the track. He’d been here for years, and he’d never been able to entirely clear them from their warren. No matter how often he crawled his way through the piss and shit of their nests killing the monsters, they always came back.

“Metaphor for my life,” Eskel said to Scorpion.

Scorpion, being a horse, did not respond.

With a scowl, Eskel blasted the entire mountainside, peeling an acre of stone off the cliff and setting loose a slide that filled the narrow pass behind him. When the dust cleared, Eskel unsheathed his silver sword and stuck it point down into the loose stone of the slide.

A sword to mark a witcher’s grave.

He had already left his medallion behind on the kitchen table, pinning a note to Jan in place with its weight. He wasn’t a witcher anymore, not really, not since the final fall of Kaer Morhen had brought an end to their kind. He was a penniless drifter, with nothing but empty hands and an empty heart. Approaching his one-time friends as anything else would have made a liar out of him.

*

Novigrad was on the way to Nilfgaard, so Eskel stopped there to visit Jaskier. Priscilla met him at the door.

“Eskel,” she said, embracing him. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

“And you, Priscilla,” Eskel said. He only knew the troubadour by reputation, Geralt having spoken of her with a grin when he described how Jaskier’s most recent conquest had become so much more to the bard.

“But I thought…” Eskel had said, trailing off when he realized he didn’t know how to ask the question on the tip of his tongue.

Geralt shrugged, his barely-there smile slipping away entirely. “I don’t mind. They’re human, Esk.”

Eskel didn’t know what he meant then, but he was starting to understand. Priscilla was elegantly dressed and had the carriage of a performer, but the lithe, blonde girl Geralt had described had matured into a stout, gray-haired woman. Eskel realized he didn’t know how many years had passed since he visited Jaskier last.

“I have to warn you, Eskel,” Priscilla said, keeping her hands on his arms, “Jaskier may not know you.”

“Was he hurt?” Eskel knew well Jaskier’s tendency to throw himself headfirst into danger, if he’d been hurt when Geralt was around—

“No, no. Nothing like that I’m afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes, I am. Very.” Priscilla scrubbed her face with her hands, squashing and pulling on the lines around her eyes on and mouth. “Some days he doesn’t even know me. The healers say some folk are just prone to it, this memory loss.”

“I’m sorry, Priscilla.”

“Me too. Come in, let’s see what the gods have seen fit to leave him with today.”

Jaskier was seated in a comfortable chair beside the fire, a carved lute in his hands. His hair had gone entirely gray, and though his face remained boyishly young, his frame had shrunk, time taking his flesh from him in equal parts with his mind.

“A witcher!” Jaskier exclaimed, clapping his hands in delight. “Oh, this is wonderful. One of my dearest friends is a witcher. Well, he’d never admit we’re friends, but we are. And he’s a wolf too! You must know him, Geralt of Rivia?”

“I do,” Eskel choked out.

“He’s my muse!” Jaskier said. “Want to hear the song I wrote about him?”

“Which one?”

A frown creased Jaskier’s forehead. “I’ve only written the one.”

“Sure,” Eskel said, sinking into the other chair beside the hearth. “I’d love to hear it.”

Jaskier sang for a few hours, belting out song after song about Geralt in a strong, unwavering voice. Not long past sunset, Priscilla collected him for bed.

“I hope you’ll stay a few days, witcher,” Jaskier said over his shoulder as she led him away, “One of my dearest friends is a witcher, you must know him.”

“I do,” Eskel confirmed. He found a smile for the bard from somewhere, and then Jaskier was out of sight.

Eskel did stay the night, and several more weeks, helping Priscilla around the house. On Jaskier’s better days, they settled around the fire and talked about old times. Sometimes they could almost pretend everything was alright.

“Does Geralt know?” Eskel asked Priscilla when Jaskier nodded off.

“He does. He visits sometimes. Less often now.”

Eskel growled.

Jaskier stirred, stretching. “I don’t blame him,” he said, staring into the fire.

“For what?” Eskel asked, as innocently as he could.

The bard favored him with a fond, exasperated look. “I’m slipping away, Eskel. I don’t blame Geralt for not wanting to see it. Surely you can understand distancing yourself from the loved ones you’ve lost?”

“No, I’ve never done that,” Eskel said with far more force than he intended.

“Hmm,” Jaskier replied. His expression of amusement as he imitated Geralt spoke volumes of how little he believed Eskel.

“You’re not lost,” Eskel told him.

“Not at this exact moment, no. But I will be, tomorrow, the next day. Someday, I’ll be gone forever. Then there’ll only be you for him.”

“Geralt doesn’t need me. He has Yen, Ciri…”

“Yen is often…well, abroad isn’t the right word.” Jaskier shook his head, his face equal parts fondness and annoyance. “One world was not enough for her, so she has sought wider horizons with the help of our lady of space and time.”

Eskel snorted at Ciri’s elaborate moniker. “Pbbt. The cub will always be the cub to me, no matter how many worlds she throws Yen into.”

“You should visit Ciri,” Jaskier said with a yawn. “She’d welcome it.”

Closing his eyes to sleep that night, Eskel thought back to the day Geralt had left for the Path, when Eskel had looked out over the wall to catch a flash of white hair in the forest below. When he’d turned away from the hand Geralt raised in farewell. He thought of a dead-eyed Geralt many decades later, asking Eskel if he kept his promises as Eskel rode away.

Perhaps he did know something about putting distance between himself and those he thought he’d lost. 

*

At Priscilla’s insistence, Eskel presented himself at the Nilfgaardian ambassador’s home in Novigrad. He’d barely stuttered out a word at the ambassador’s door before he was swept into the house like a long-lost brother.

“Master Witcher! This is a surprise, but I assure you, it is a delight.”

“Right,” Eskel said. “Same here. Uh. So, I’m looking for Ciri—that is, the Empress.”

“Of course, of course. Right this way.” The ambassador gestured. Several guards formed up around Eskel and hustled him down the stairs into a wide space in the basement.

“Am I being abducted?” Eskel asked idly as they shoved him into the center of the space.

“Goodness no!” the ambassador said, flapping his hands. “I’d thank you not to mention anything of the sort to her Imperial Majesty.”

“Oh-kay,” Eskel said, squinting at the man.

The ambassador jammed a crystal into a notch in the wall. A portal opened a few feet in front of Eskel, the blue light of it pulsing and swirling in a nauseating pattern.

“Go on then, Master Witcher,” the ambassador said, bowing to Eskel.

“Right.” Eskel stepped through the portal. For an instant that lasted a lifetime, his body stretched between worlds in an endless line, and then he came through to the other side, feeling as if he’d left his guts in Novigrad.

“Master Witcher!” A bowing attendant hustled up to him. “Right this way.”

Eskel looked around as he was led through palace, taking in the sight of Nilfgaard’s much-vaunted seat of power. It was a beautiful place, with high-ceilinged, arched hallways and stained-glass windows that let in shards of colored light. A lush, thick-pile rug softened the black and white tiles of the floor. Eskel tried to imagine the girl he knew, Ciri with her fly-away blonde hair and a sword that practically outweighed her banging on her back, running down these hallways. He couldn’t quite manage it.

“Where is he?” a familiar voice demanded.

Eskel couldn’t help his grin as Ciri came marching around the corner at speed, slamming into him and not letting go. Despite the elaborately embroidered fabric of her black dress and her intricately styled hair, Ciri still smelled a little like sword oil. Like home. Eskel hugged her back. He held on to her until neither of them could ignore the volume of her advisor’s throat clearing.

Ciri kept one arm around Eskel’s waist when she turned to glare at the man.

“The witcher will be staying with us then?” he inquired.

“Obviously,” Ciri said with all the disdain of an empress. “You know which rooms to use, I trust?”

Eskel tamped down on the corners of his mouth as the man swallowed and nodded.

“I have empress-y things to do, I’m afraid,” Ciri said, kissing Eskel’s cheek. Several of her attendants looked as if they’d swallowed their tongues. “Let’s catch up over dinner.”

*

They put him in rooms that smelled like Geralt. Eskel couldn’t tell how long it had been since Geralt had used them, but it couldn’t have been more than a few months. Several extra sets of clothes in Geralt’s size still hung in the wardrobe and the pillow was thick with the scent of his hair.

“Dirty trick,” Eskel said to Ciri when they met for dinner that night.

Ciri grinned. “He misses you.”

“I miss him,” Eskel responded, realizing it was true as the words left his mouth.

“Then what are you doing here?”

Eskel was saved from answering by a portal opening just beside the fireplace. He put his hand on the dagger at his hip but released the hilt with a sigh when Yennefer stepped into the room.

“Eskel,” she said, inclining her head.

“Yen.”

They eyed each other.

“Come, sit. Eat.” Ciri said, taking her own seat around the little table. With a shared scowl of mutual distrust, Yen and Eskel followed her example.

Despite their complicated history, they settled into easy conversation quickly. As the night wore on, helped along by stories and hard alcohol, Eskel realized he and Yen had more in common than he had realized. They both loved Ciri and had once loved Geralt. Maybe still loved Geralt. Eskel wasn’t sure, of his feelings or hers.

“So, Triss tells me you have magic hands,” Yen said to Eskel many hours later. Ciri perked up from where she was blearily signing papers. Eskel hoped there was nothing vital in the files she was meant to be reviewing.

“Something like that,” Eskel said. “Too much chaos for one witcher, apparently.”

“Eskel can cast Quen on other people,” Ciri said to Yennefer.

“Interesting,” Yennefer said. “That should be impossible.”

“It is,” Eskel said, rubbing at his cheek. “I can’t do that.”

“Geralt told me you could cast Quen on other people,” Ciri said, pointing to the space slightly to the left of Eskel’s head.

“Not other people,” Eskel said. “Just Geralt. And not anymore.”

“You sure?” Yennefer asked. “My best guess would be some sort of sympathetic resonant response based on your complimentary natures. Hardly something that would fade.”

“It didn’t fade,” Eskel said. “It died. Was killed.“

Ciri sniffled. “Is that why you won’t go home to him?”

“What? No, of course not. It was a long time ago, after—when we were still boys.” Eskel made the mistake of meeting Yennefer’s eyes, and saw the understanding click into place there.

“After the additional trials,” she said. “After they messed with his mind.”

“Does that make sense?” Ciri asked the ceiling. “They messed with Geralt, and Eskel’s magic stopped working?”

“No it does not,” Yennefer said, emphasizing each word evenly. “But magic is all about belief. Eskel believed he was changed.”

“Because he changed!”

“How much? Was it not you who told me ‘he is a whole person’? To love him for who he is?”

“What’s between me and Geralt is none of your damn business.” He honestly wasn't sure what to call it. Geralt and Yennefer came together like superheated Igni and ice-laced Aard, an explosion of steam. The love Geralt shared with Jaskier was quieter and somehow all the more intense for it, a banked fire of intimate tenderness endlessly stoked by softly spoken words. Whatever was between Eskel and Geralt, it wasn’t any of that. Eskel and Geralt just…were.

“You wouldn’t know love if it bit you in the face,” Yennefer said. She patted his hand consolingly. “It’s ok, he loves you anyway.”

Eskel rubbed his scars with one hand. “You’re full of shit, Yennefer of Vengerberg.”

“Then go find out for yourself, fool,” Yennefer said. “Before one of you does something irrevocably stupid and gets killed.”

“What she said,” Ciri said, nodding very seriously. She hiccupped and passed out face down on her papers.

*

Eskel stayed in Nilfgaard for a little less than a year, watching with a pride only Geralt could have understood as Ciri lead the empire. She aged in fits and starts during that time, unchanged for months then suddenly years older. At first Eskel attributed it to the stresses of being an empress. It wasn’t until spring, when the usual restlessness had Eskel’s feet itching and his brain working double-time, that he realized she was jumping through space and time with Yennefer, living whole lives in other realities. When he confronted her about it over breakfast in her sitting room, she had bomb-proof logic.

“I am taking risks, living my life. I wish I could say the same for you.” She threw her fork down with a clatter and crossed her arms over her chest.

Eskel rocked back in his seat.

“I get letters from him, you know,” Ciri said. She pulled a small stack of well-creased letters from a pocket in her dress. 

“You promised you wouldn’t tell him I’m here.“

“I haven’t, but I want to.” Despite her fine gown and her crown of braids, she suddenly looked a decade younger, like the girl she’d been, clinging to Eskel’s hand all those years ago. “Do you hate me for bringing the wild hunt down on Kaer Morhen?” she asked.

“Of course not.” Eskel wrapped his fingers over the fist she’d clenched on top of the table, his hand swallowing hers. “I could never hold you responsible for what those assholes did.”

Ciri raised her eyebrows at him and waited.

Eskel rolled his eyes and finished the thought. “And if I can’t blame you, I certainly can’t blame myself. Alright, alright. I get it. Does Geralt think it was his fault?” he asked, even though he knew the answer already.

“Of course he does, he’s Geralt.” Ciri leaned forward. “He thinks the worst, Uncle Eskel.”

Eskel left the next day. It was time to take a risk.


	13. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eskel and Geralt are reunited, much to Geralt’s surprise. Actual conversations are had. Eskel explores Geralt’s new home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Not much…adult conversations, alarming levels of fluff.
> 
> Alright, I promised we’d start getting somewhere eventually, so. We will! Showing my gamer roots now, but I think there's enough fluff for everyone. Thank you again for you continued support, I so appreciate hearing from everyone who comments. I hope this gives you a taste of the payoff to come.

“Good morning, I’m looking for Geralt of Rivia,” Eskel said.

The man who’d met him in the courtyard of the estate inclined his head. “May I ask who calls on Ser Geralt?”

“A friend.” Eskel said. He was grateful Ciri had warned him about Geralt’s new titles, he might have laughed outright in the man’s face otherwise. 

“I see.” The man clasped his hands behind his back and looked Eskel up and down.

Eskel knew he wasn’t a pretty sight, not on the best of days and certainly not today. Ciri had tried to send him off with the finest gear an empress could procure, but Eskel refused. It would only make him a target on the road. As a result, he had arrived at ‘Corvo Bianco’ lean and hungry, with empty saddlebags, threadbare clothes, and patched armor.

The man pushed his glasses up his nose. “I’m Barnabas-Basil, the majordomo. Ser Geralt is away but is expected to return soon. I can offer you our hospitality until then.”

“That would be much appreciated. Thanks B.B.”

The majordomo didn’t quite manage to suppress his answering smile, though Eskel couldn’t guess what he found so funny. With a bow, he invited Eskel to the covered porch just off the side of the main house, where he settled in to watch the estate finish out the day. 

The place had a large, happy staff, who talked and joked on their way back from tending the vines. Across the little stream beside the house was a large herb garden that had Eskel’s fingers itching, he could see several rare alchemy ingredients from here. The grindstone and armorer’s bench were nearly as tempting. All in all, it was exactly the sort of place he never would have imagined Geralt having, and still perfectly suited to him.

In the distance, Eskel heard a horse on the road. He stood and leaned on the wall, hidden by the vines shading the portico.

Geralt rode into the estate at an easy walk, several people meeting him in the courtyard. A young boy took his saddlebags and scampered up to the house with them. He bent to listen to an older woman while she made sweeping gestures at the fields. A man called out from the grindstone to ask if his swords needed sharpening. All the while, B.B. waited patiently at the top of the stairs with the cook at his side.

For a moment Eskel’s vision blurred. He felt as if he could see all Geralt’s homecomings to Kaer Morhen laid over this moment, the ghostly images of every time he slid off Roach thin and bloody that much more painful to recall because this return was so different. His face was full and pink-cheeked, his armor clean and well-repaired. He was smiling as he listened to the peasant woman, one eyebrow raised at B.B. in some inside joke.

“Ser Geralt, you have a visitor. Another witcher. He did not give his name.”

Geralt’s easy demeanor evaporated. “Where?”

Eskel stepped out from behind the cover of the vines and into the empty space in front of house.

“Wolf—”

Geralt drew his sword and launched himself at Eskel. Eskel’s Quen was automatic, the golden glow of it snapping in place just in time to keep Geralt from decapitating him. He drew his sword to meet Geralt’s next attack, the white-haired witcher launching a devasting series of lightning quick blows to drive Eskel back. He was pushing Eskel away from B.B. and the cook.

“Not sure why we’re fighting,” Eskel puffed as he parried another swing. Geralt was in fighting form, Eskel was decidedly not.

“Bad choice of faces, monster,” Geralt said. “Eskel is dead.”

“Really not,” Eskel said, ducking the punch Geralt aimed at his temple.

“Yes, you are,” Geralt shouted. The power in his swings increased.

Eskel was running out of patience. And strength. He jumped back as far as he could, then dropped both his sword and his Quen.

Geralt’s eyes widened. The blow he aimed at Eskel’s throat missed by a finger’s breadth as Geralt wrenched himself back.

They stood glaring at each other.

“You died!” Geralt shouted.

“You died first!” Eskel said, not sure whether he was talking about the pogrom or even older trauma.

“No, I didn’t!”

“Well neither did I!”

Geralt snarled. He yanked at the collar of his shirt, prying his chest armor open enough to dig around beneath it. The medallion he pulled out from under his clothes had a familiar yellow crystal melded to the back. He threw it at Eskel.

Eskel scrambled to catch his medallion, still warm with the heat from Geralt’s body.

“I left it behind,” Eskel said.

“With a fucking suicide note.”

“What? No! Being up there in the mountains wasn’t working so I decided to leave it all behind and…fuck. Yeah, that probably read like a suicide note.”

“I nearly tore the man’s throat out with my teeth, when I found him wearing your medallion.”

Eskel winced. “It was a poor village, and kind enough. I thought maybe they could melt down the silver.”

Geralt turned on his heel and began to pace. “Right. Just silver, after all. No other value in it.”

“I—” Eskel ran his thumb across the patterned back of the medallion, the elvish words inscribed there.

“And your sword? What the fuck were you thinking?”

“I’m fucking retired, is what I was thinking.”

“I’m sure a pack of nekkers would respectfully withdraw if you explained that. Fuck!” He whirled to glare at Eskel. “Years, Eskel. I searched for you for years, only to find you dead.”

“I didn’t think you’d—” He was not sure how he wanted to end that sentence, but it didn’t matter. The damage was done.

Geralt reared back as if struck.

B.B. scowled at Eskel. “Maybe Master Eskel should leave.”

“Yes, yeah.” Eskel swallowed hard. “I should leave. I never should have come.”

Eskel braced for another blow as Geralt stomped towards him. Geralt slammed his body into Eskel's and clamped his arms around Eskel’s waist, pulling him in for tight hug.

“You never should have gone anywhere else, you stupid fuck,” Geralt said. He was shaking.

“Shh,” Eskel comforted automatically, his hands coming up to cup Geralt’s shoulder blades. “We’re alright. You’re alright.”

“Why.” Geralt demanded.

“I was afraid you’d blame me for what happened with the wild hunt. Ciri was on the battlefield because of me, because I was getting my ass handed to me.”

Geralt jabbed him in the side with one hand without letting him go. “You idiot. She was on the battlefield because she’s Ciri. Besides, I brought them down on us.”

“You didn’t have a choice, Wolf. It’s no more your fault than it’s mine. You idiot.”

“Fine.”

“Fine!”

Geralt let Eskel go so fast he staggered. “I need a drink,” he said, heading for the front door.

Eskel hesitated.

“You’re coming,” Geralt said, turning to point at him with one finger. “Then we are taking a tour of my godsdamned estate, and you will make admiring noises at the herb garden.”

“Whatever you say.” Eskel smiled and followed Geralt.

* * *

The shaded portico beside the house made the perfect place for an informal dinner. B.B. and Geralt produced a table and Marlene, Geralt's cook, soon had it groaning under the weight of freshly baked breads, dumplings, pates, cheeses and bowls of colorful fruit.

“Hardly fit for company,” she said with a tisk when Eskel stuttered out a halting praise for the meal.

“He's not company,” Geralt said, taking two bottles of wine from her hands to add the multitude already in the center of the table. “He's Eskel.”

Marlene's eyebrows quirked up, then climbed even farther when she glanced at Eskel. He wiped the crooked smile from his face with one hand; it tended to scare civilians.

“Don't hesitate to call out if you need anything else, sirs,” B.B. said.

Marlene smiled at Geralt and plunked a kiss on his cheek that surprised him into stillness, then excused herself with a curtsy to follow B.B. away from the main house.

Geralt stared after them, then shot a sheepish look at Eskel. “Afraid I'm not the landholder they expected, but they tolerate me.”

“They might even like you,” Eskel said, watching the two put their heads together as they walked away. “Which speaks volumes about their taste.”

“It's generally reliable, their good opinion of me aside.” Geralt rubbed the back of his neck. “Whole damn country seems to have a witcher-shaped blind spot.”

Geralt sat and shoved a plate across towards Eskel in invitation. He sank onto the bench across from his friend with a sigh. Shoving an enormous hunk of bread into his mouth, Eskel began heaping food onto his plate.

Though the corners of Geralt's lips were tipped up in something that looked suspiciously like a smile, he didn't comment on Eskel's portions. Instead, he matched him plate for plate and glass of wine for glass of wine.

“Here,” he said when Eskel finally began to slow down. He passed Eskel a clean glass and filled it with a different wine. “Corvo Bianco's home vintage.”

Eskel took a slow sip. “'s good! They love you, don't they? The...the...wine people. 'Cause you can tell the age of the vines from the scent of an empty barrel in a cellar three miles away.”

“Vintners. Wine people are vintners.” Geralt leaned back on the wall behind him, lacing his fingers together over his slightly distended belly.

“You’re a vintner.” He wagged a finger at Geralt.

“I am.” Geralt’s neck straightened as he preened a bit. “I never want for work here.”

“What's the real work like?”

“Hmm.” Geralt's gaze drifted over Eskel 's shoulder to the countryside rolling away in a patchwork of green and gold. The setting sun lit his face, and Eskel could see the faintest smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. Eskel’s stomach swooped hard enough to make his eye twitch.

“Esk? You even listening?” Geralt asked. The hint of a smile that had lurked around his mouth all night had grown, bowing his lips up in a perfect pink rosebud.

“Yeah, totally listening. What'd you say?”

“Hardest fight I had in the last few years was the tourney.”

“‘Cause you can't kill anyone in a tourney.”

“There's that.” Geralt stretched like a cat, hands above his head as he tensed and released one muscle group at a time.

Eskel was still hungry, though his stomach bulged like he had a parasite. He stared at the lines of Geralt’s body as he moved. “So that’s it, then? Just tourneys and wine-tastings?”

Geralt wobbled his hand. “Mostly just ride around and run into trouble. You know, bandits and kidnapped merchants, helping knights who bit off more than they can chew. That kind of thing.”

Eskel thought back to Geralt as he’d seen him riding into Corvo Bianco, shining in the late afternoon sun. You might be fooled if you didn’t look closely enough, what with the well-worn black armor and the mean horse. But Eskel could see it. Apparently Toussaint could too.

“You…you’re a fucking knight—” a strangled giggle worked its way out of his throat “—like in the old stories we used to read.”

“Shut up,” Geralt said, with an edge in his voice.

“It’s amazing,” Eskel plowed on, a little too drunk to care about Geralt’s reaction. “You're riding around saving people recreationally. Knew you would be the best of us. Knew it.”

Geralt scowled and got up. He began to shove pillows and cushions off the furniture and onto a heavy rug beside the porch.

Eskel waited a diplomatic five seconds. “Not an expert in houses, but doesn't the carpet go inside the building?”

“Not in this house. The stars are outside.”

“Faultless logic.”

“Come on, then, if you can stop being an ass.” Geralt sprawled out on his back, leaving a conspicuous empty space beside himself.

Moving carefully around the obstacle course of furniture, Eskel joined him. A puff of air enveloped him as he sprawled out on the cushions, smelling strongly of sun-dried laundry, bread, and Geralt. Eskel filled his lungs with it and his stomach began to settle.

They lay in silence as the stars began to fill the blue-black bowl of the sky above them. Soon the sky was alive with light, tiny white pinpricks and flickering blue-white giants scattered across glowing nets of distant stars.

“Beautiful,” Eskel said, when the lightning bugs began to compete with the sky for attention.

“Yes.” Geralt's breath ruffled Eskel’s hair as he spoke.

Eskel turned his face to meet Geralt's eyes. Even in the darkness of a moonless night, Eskel could see Geralt's face clearly. His earlier half-smile was tucked away behind the old familiar blankness.

“What're you hiding?” Eskel asked, touching one corner of Geralt's mouth with the tip of his index finger. “I know better now, this isn't who you are, Ser Geralt.”

Crinkles etched themselves into the corners of Geralt's eyes. “You know fuck all, Eskel.”

Eskel snorted. “Fair. I'm sorry.”

“Hmm. For what?”

Eskel took his alcohol-soaked courage in hand. “For how I’ve treated you our whole lives.”

“Which part exactly. Saving me over and over? Treating me like a person?”

“Of course not, no. No, I’m sorry for taking what I wanted from you when I—” he touched Geralt’s hip tentatively.

Geralt heaved a long sigh. “Ok.”

“Ok?”

“We cover that every single time. It was ok, it’s still ok.” He looked at Eskel expectantly. “Try again.”

“Uhm. Then, I’m sorry for giving up on you too soon, after the trials—”

“No. You were the only one who didn’t give up on me entirely. Try. Again.”

Cringing at the angry barb in Geralt’s voice, Eskel stuttered. “I, uh.”

“Apologize for dying, for staying dead.”

Eskel blinked at his friend’s bared teeth and wondered if his nose was in danger. “I’m so—”

“Apologize for not listening. For leaving me to put myself back together alone.”

Eskel flinched. He rolled to his side and reached out, resting his fingertips on Geralt’s chest, half expecting the other man to shrug him off. “I am sorry. I really am, Wolf. I was—afraid. But I am sorry.”

Geralt turned his face away. “Good. You fucking should be. And I forgive you. Blanket forgiveness for everything you think you did to me.”

Eskel swallowed the lump in his throat. “That's a lot.”

Geralt turned his face towards Eskel again so he could raise an unimpressed eyebrow. “Whatever. I’m sorry I broke my promise. Sorry I didn’t find you.”

“’s ok. Wasn’t ready to be found.” Eskel smothered a yawn. Despite the heavy meal weighing him down, he felt strangely light, like he might drift off into the starry sky above.

“Figured. Now go the fuck to sleep, Esk,” Geralt ordered.

Eskel flexed his fingers on Geralt’s shirt, feeling the beat of his heart under Eskel’s palm. Anchored to Geralt by that slow and steady pulse, Eskel slept.

* * *

Eskel woke slowly, floating up to consciousness through syrupy layers of sleep. He was warm and sated, limbs loose like they were after he slept deeply at Kaer Morhen. For a long, long moment he thought that’s where he was, his sense of safety was bone-deep and he was bathed in the scent of home. But the light breeze ruffling his hair and the birdsong chattering in his ears didn't fit.

He opened his eyes to complete darkness.

“‘ve gone blind,” he slurred, his lips moving against fabric.

Someone snorted, jostling Eskel.

“Wine wasn't that good.” Geralt's voice rumbled beneath Eskel’s cheek. “Close your eyes. It's bright.”

Eskel obediently shut his eyes. The warm weight over his eyes lifted away, then settled on the back of his neck, Geralt's enormous palm spanning it. Sunlight on his eyelids turned his vision pink and he groaned, slitting his pupils. He cracked one eye.

They were sprawled in a tangle of limbs on a heap of cushions, Eskel clutching Geralt as if he were an extra-large, uncomfortably angular child's toy. His unmarred cheek was pillowed on a collarbone. Beyond the planes of Geralt's chest, the verdant rows of a vineyard rolled away towards a little river.

“Toussaint,” Eskel said blankly.

“Maybe the wine was better than I thought.”

“Was pretty good.” Eskel tightened his arms around Geralt’s waist as the memory of last night and the past couple of decades finally returned.

“You stink,” Geralt said.

“You stink...more.”

Geralt snorted. “Weak. Also, not true.”

Eskel inhaled deeply. He mostly smelled Geralt and the baked-bread scent of happiness, but there was a definite undercurrent of horse and his own body.

“Fine, you’re right,” Eskel said.

“Come on.” Geralt poked Eskel's side until he began to move. In a protracted series of pops and groans, they separated and found their feet.

“Are we old?” Eskel asked. “Maybe we're old.”

“For witchers? Depends.” Geralt ambled around the house to an addition attached to the back.

“On what?”

Geralt grunted, pushing the sticking door until it slammed open. “On how lucky they are. I have terrible luck, might get offed at any moment. Means I’ve lived to a grand old age. You're young.”

“What, I’m luckier than you?” Eskel followed him into the humid darkness of what turned out to be a modest bathing room. “How so?”

Geralt bared his teeth at him, eyes glowing in the darkness. “You've got me.”

Eskel barked a laugh, digging for fresh clothes in the saddlebags someone had thoughtfully left just inside the door. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Geralt strip, noting a few new scars and the comforting solidness of his frame. He had meat on his bones, more ass for Eskel to grab.

“You look good,” Eskel said, licking his lips. The faint musky scent of lust entered the air.

Geralt gave him a sharp, assessing look, then completely ignored him, filling a bucket from a large cistern set high in the room. It disappeared through the wall into the main house.

“Heated by the kitchen fire?” Eskel asked, tamping down on his body’s reaction to Geralt.

Grunting in confirmation, Geralt handed him the bucket before filling another for himself. They washed quickly, not bothering to fill the enormous tub that took up half the room. Realizing Geralt must have installed it to share with Yennefer killed the last of Eskel’s arousal.

“Got quite a set up here, huh?” he asked weakly.

“Want to see?” Geralt's face lit with boyish enthusiasm, and Eskel’s stomach gave a treacherous little lurch that had nothing to do with his dick.

“Yeah, I'd really like that.”

They dressed quickly, then Eskel followed Geralt down away from the main house.

“Built the barn first,” Geralt said. “Room for three horses, pen out back has goats. B.B. hates 'em.”

“Goats?” Eskel followed Geralt around to the back of the stable. “How could anyone hate goats?”

“Doesn't like their eyes.”

“ …Racist. Goats are the best.” Eskel pried himself away from a particularly feisty kid he'd already mentally named Lambert.

Geralt led him away from the barn, walking them in a spiral around the property that skimmed the fields and the herb garden, where Eskel dutifully made appreciative noises, before finishing in the cellar. Most of the space was dedicated to wine barrels, but there was also a large, well-stocked alchemy workroom.

“Here,” Geralt said, brushing the dust off the doorknob Eskel hadn't noticed. At Geralt's beckoning gesture, Eskel opened the door and stepped through.

Books. Eskel knew it before Geralt lit the lamps, from the first wave of scent to crash over him, ink and parchment, leather and time thick in his nose. He ran his fingers over the spines on the shelf nearest him, reading titles. History and poetry tomes dominated the selection, although there were of course several bestiaries. Familiar bestiaries.

“How?” Eskel asked, pulling one off the shelf and cradling it in his hands.

“Our Lady of space and time is not above doing a favor for her old man.”

Eskel laughed wetly. Ciri, the empress of Nilfgaard, had ferried old books from Kaer Morhen’s ruins into Geralt's cellar.

“And you say you aren't a lucky man,” Eskel said, looking around the library.

“...Right,” Geralt said. A line had appeared between his brows.

Eskel shot him a smile. “Your place is great. Thanks for letting me stay for a bit.”

“Hmm,” Geralt said, and Eskel discovered there were still Geralt-grunts he could not interpret. “Come on.”

They wandered back to the house, the silence between them not-quite comfortable.

The interior of the main house was pleasantly dim, lit by candlelight instead of harsh daylight. Which was probably good, since Geralt's decorating style was more castle armory than country estate. Swords hung on every wall and armor stood in every corner, both still grimy with use. Marlene was setting out yet another meal in the dining room.

“Do you do anything but eat?” Eskel asked Geralt gently.

“Didn't hear any complaints last night.”

Marlene looked up from the table. “The gentlemen had a good evening, then?” she asked, eyes sparkling.

“Er—” Eskel crashed into a suit of armor as he shot Geralt a wild look.

“Dinner was great,” Geralt said, rubbing the back of his neck the way that meant he'd be blushing, if he could.

“Thank you, Ser,“ Marlene said. She withdrew from the room, winking at Eskel as she passed.

“But...we didn't do anything?” Eskel said, staring after her. He looked at Geralt, letting his eyes crawl up the other man's body. “Not that I'm opposed.”

Geralt turned away, settling at the table “Come, eat.”

Eskel settled into the chair next to Geralt. “Tell me more about these grapes of yours.”

“Not mine, really. Probably older than either of us—” he launched into a long-winded discussion of the grape varietal's history, which Eskel promptly tuned out in favor of watching him eat.

It was good to see Geralt so healthy. His easy grace as he gestured had all the usual predatory fluidity and none of the feral sharpness. He was happy here, valued in a way he never had been before. The loss of Kaer Morhen had crushed Eskel, but it had liberated Geralt. The thought would have made Eskel hate any other person. But not Geralt.

Eskel couldn’t hate Geralt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I always found it hilarious that Geralt immediately nicknames a near-complete stranger (B.B.)


	14. My aching soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geralt and Eskel find old habits hard to break. Bad choices are made, but a revelation sets Eskel on the right path at last. Only time will tell if he will be in time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Painfully awkward sexually explicit situation, misunderstandings, mention of the trials
> 
> Sorry for the late-ish post, this chapter gave me hell. It's been entirely re-written three times since yesterday. I think I can hear your agonized screaming from the future, but you all were right, we still had _issues_ to work out >:-D
> 
> Chapter title from "Young and Beautiful" by Lana Del Rey. The line "Will you still love me when I've got nothing but my aching soul?" sorta inspired this fic. And fair credit where it’s due, I swiped this first pun straight from the game.

“...so I told him that investment didn't make _cents_ ,” Geralt concluded.

Eskel punched Geralt on the thigh for another terrible pun, then left his hand there as Geralt continued to wax poetic about banking, of all things. The arousal that had been simmering just under Eskel’s skin all day began to boil as he let his hand linger on the warm muscle of Geralt’s thigh. It had been decades and half a dozen lovers since they’d last crashed together, but Eskel never stopped wanting Geralt.

Geralt had fallen silent without Eskel noticing. His face was hiding-secrets blank again, his tiny smile wiped away as if it had never been. The musky scent of lust filled the little dining room, obliterating the fresh-baked bread smell of happiness entirely, but Eskel couldn't tell who it was coming from. He let his hand drift a little higher on Geralt’s leg and Geralt raised an eyebrow at him.

“You want to...?” Eskel asked.

Geralt swallowed the last of his wine, put down his glass with a clink, and stood.

“This way,” he said, heading towards his bedroom without a backwards glance.

Eskel followed him, shutting the door behind them. Though the room had no windows, the warm light of several candelabras lit the space, giving life to the landscapes hung on the walls and making the silk threads of the soft furnishings glow. Despite the comfort of the room, the decor was strangely lopsided. One of the two bookshelves was empty, as were most of the clothing hooks, and the far bedside table was dusty from long disuse.

Yennefer clearly hadn't visited for a while. Maybe she didn't like the bestiary and poetry selection in the cellar library; she had always struck Eskel as more of an ancient spell-books and trashy romances kind of woman.

Geralt had stripped off his clothes while Eskel contemplated the room. He stood naked before Eskel, watching him with slightly narrowed eyes, already half hard.

“What surface?” Geralt prompted when Eskel just stared at the unabashed display of skin and muscle.

Eskel stilled his flinch at Geralt’s toneless question. Raising his hand slowly, Eskel laid it across the back of Geralt’s neck, cupping his nape as he’d done a hundred times over their long lifetimes. He tried to reel Geralt in for a kiss but faltered to a stop when he felt Geralt brace against the movement. He was watching Eskel’s lips warily.

“I won't bite,” Eskel tried to joke, but it fell flat between them.

Geralt shrugged, little more than a ripple across his tight shoulders. The silence stretched while Eskel wracked his brain for some way to alleviate the growing awkwardness.

With an eye roll and sigh, Geralt interrupted Eskel’s scrambling. “Told you, it's ok. What surface?”

“Uh. Nice bed you've got there,” Eskel said, trying to ignore his nerves. He pulled his medallion off and put it on the less dusty of the two bedside tables. He usually left it on for sex; he usually left it on all the time. Until he hadn’t. But tonight felt different.

He wanted tonight to be different.

Geralt had climbed on to the bed on his hands and knees, facing the wall and away from Eskel. When Eskel touched his lower back tentatively, he spread his legs further and dropped to his elbows, hiding his face in his arms. His body was bow-string taut beneath Eskel’s hand.

“You’re beautiful like this,” Eskel said. Acres of alabaster skin, ridges of muscle and seams of scars, all this power and strength bent to Eskel’s will, it made him feel ten feet tall and invincible.

And it wasn’t enough.

His dick began to wilt in his trousers.

Shaking himself, Eskel ran his thumbs over the dimples at the base of Geralt’s spine. He looked down at the sight before him: the great white wolf, Geralt of Rivia, bent over and at his mercy.

“I’m surprised we made through the whole night without some vintners’ joke about bungholes,” Eskel said, as he trailed his fingers down Geralt’s back.

Geralt’s skin twitched under Eskel’s hands. He didn’t speak, didn’t laugh or joke. He was still visibly aroused but…he didn’t smell happy.

Eskel had gone completely flaccid.

“I don’t want this,” he realized aloud. For the first time since he’d gotten on the bed, Geralt turned his face towards Eskel. It was parchment empty and gravestone still.

This was not the man he’d spent the evening talking to and laughing with. Eskel wanted that man in his arms tonight, chuckling as he nibbled on Eskel’s ear, sharing skin space and secrets into the darkest hours of the morning. Eskel wanted his best friend.

Eskel wanted his best friend to want him.

“It’s just not enough, anymore.” He patted the ass presented to him awkwardly. “You’re not—I don’t want—You—” he stuttered to a stop.

Geralt’s eyebrows snapped together with an almost audible click. He rolled into a sitting position and cupped his hands over his groin protectively, glaring up at Eskel. His head tilted to the side as he silently demanded an explanation.

Rolling around on the bed had built static electricity in Geralt’s fine hair, and Eskel couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to smooth the silky strands back to his skull, couldn’t stop his cringe when Geralt twitched away from the touch.

“Maybe we can try something else?” Eskel asked. He had to break their old patterns, to show Geralt he could be kind during sex and not just after he’d taken what he wanted. “What do you want, Wolf?”

Blinking, Geralt gave him a noncommittal shrug.

“Ok, ok. Maybe, scoot back a little? Please?” Eskel asked, trying to ignore the tick in Geralt’s cheek at the plea.

Geralt shut his eyes and scooted back on the bed. Eskel straddled his lap, kissing the tip of Geralt’s nose as he settled. Geralt’s lips parted in surprise, so Eskel kissed those too. He slid his tongue into Geralt’s mouth and ran it along the blunted edges of his teeth. Geralt shuddered in response.

“Tell me what you want,” Eskel said.

Shaking his head against Eskel’s lips, Geralt grunted in denial. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” Eskel leaned on Geralt’s chest, bearing him down onto the bed and catching the back of his head in one hand. He leaned on his elbows on either side of Geralt’s ribcage, careful not to crush him with his weight. Geralt’s hands clenched into fists against Eskel’s collarbones.

His eyes were still shut.

Eskel frowned at the lines carved around Geralt’s downturned mouth. “Tell me you want me, at least. Because I’m starting to have serious doubts.”

“I—” Geralt cut himself off, biting his own lip hard enough to draw blood.

“Hey, this doesn’t have to hurt.” Eskel soothed away the blood with his thumb, stroking across the bow of Geralt’s lips. “I don’t want it to hurt. I want to know I’m not forcing you. Talk to me.”

“You aren’t forcing me, you never were,” Geralt said in a rush, his fists pushing up on Eskel’s chest. He opened his eyes and tapped the knuckles of one hand three times on Eskel’s collar bone.

“Good.” Eskel kissed along the line of one sharp cheekbone, sucked Geralt’s earlobe into his mouth and nibbled gently. “I know I want you.”

Geralt groaned. Eskel kissed his way down the side of his neck until he reached the teeth marks on Geralt’s shoulder.

“Tell me you want me,” Eskel said, resting his forehead on Geralt’s marred shoulder. “Tell me you want this.”

“I—” Geralt’s back bowed, tension arching him up into Eskel’s body. “I can’t.”

Eskel lathed his tongue over scars he’d left on Geralt’s skin. “Please.”

“I—Stop, Esk.” Geralt panted, twisting in the cage of Eskel’s arms. “Please stop.”

Eskel froze, lifting his head. His stomach dropped.

Geralt’s face was clouded with mindless panic and something that looked a lot like pain. He pushed at Eskel’s shoulders with uncoordinated hands until Eskel rolled off him, flopping onto his side on the bed. Geralt rolled in the other direction, facing away from Eskel and curling into an improbably small knot on top of the covers.

“Wolf?” Eskel asked, tucking his arms close to his chest to keep them from reaching, to clamp down on his squirming insides.

Apparently a century’s worth of baggage didn’t leave room for anything else in their bed. Geralt was so acclimated to Eskel’s violence that even Eskel’s tender touches caused nothing but pain.

Geralt’s body was trembling, his shaking increasing as Eskel stared at the point between his shoulder blades, until his whole body was wracked by wrenching shudders.

“Hey. Wolf. Are you ok?”

A wave of pain scent hit Eskel like a wall.

Eskel was on his feet without deciding to be there. He rushed around to the other side of the bed, scanning Geralt’s body for injuries as he did, knowing he wouldn’t find any. When he knelt to meet Geralt’s eyes, they were glassy and unseeing. His chest barely rose with each slow, intermittent breath.

“Please, you’re scaring me.” Eskel patted his cheek roughly. Geralt’s hand snapped up and wrapped around Eskel’s wrist in a crushing hold.

Geralt’s pupils contracted as they focused on Eskel’s face. “What?”

“Don’t ‘what’ me, I’m what-ing you. What the hell is going on here?”

With a gasp that restarted his breathing, Geralt rolled away from Eskel and on to his back. He held on to Eskel’s wrist.

“Knew I could never be enough for you,” Geralt said. “Not like this. Trying to fix it.”

“That’s not it,” Eskel argued. He leaned over the bed to get Geralt to look at him. “We just want different things, that’s all.”

Eskel wanted breakfast under the vine-shaded porch with Geralt’s thigh pressed against his, he wanted to nod knowingly while Geralt described cultivation techniques he’d never heard of, he wanted to fall asleep with Geralt sprawled out on his chest. He wanted to hold down Geralt’s wrists and take him apart with slow, easy pleasure. But Geralt had never sought Eskel’s touch, never pushed for more than the rough sex Eskel demanded when his self-loathing twisted him in knots.

Oblivious to Eskel’s brooding, Geralt swallowed hard. He tapped his index finger three times on the inside of Eskel’s wrist.

_Tap tap tap._

“Wolf?” Eskel asked, some forgotten corner of his heart coming to life with a whoosh. “What do you want?”

“I can’t want,” Geralt said, his eyes begging Eskel to understand.

Eskel growled. “That’s fucking bullshit. You wanted Yennefer, you wanted Jaskier. I think you even loved them!”

Sweat was standing out on Geralt’s forehead. “Yes. I did. I do. I—fuck.”

“It’s just me then.” Eskel brushed a few strands of damp hair away from Geralt’s face.

“Yes. No! I can’t—” his free hand came up to clutch at the side of his head “—there’s something wrong with me.”

“There’s a difference between not being able to want and just not wanting, Wolf.” Eskel said. He rubbed the heal of his hand across his aching sternum. “It’s ok. You’re still my oldest friend, my closest family. We don’t have to do this anymore.”

“Don’t want that.” Geralt sucked in a short breath through his teeth. “Please, Esk. Listen,” he pushed out. He squeezed Eskel’s wrist again. _Tap tap tap._

Eskel waited. And waited. Watched the sweat on Geralt’s forehead drip down his temples as his mouth worked soundlessly. Felt his ears begin to burn as it became increasingly clear Geralt wouldn’t find the words. “You’re not talking,” he said, as gently as he could. “Give me something to work with here, Wolf. I just, I just need you to want me.”

“I can’t—” Geralt’s whole body went rigid on the bed “—fuck. I’m sorry, I can’t. Just go, Eskel.” He squeezed Eskel’s wrist one more time, _tap tap tap_ , then dropped it, his hand curling into a fist at his side.

Eskel went.

* * *

Geralt met him at the stable before dawn the next day, barefoot and clad in nothing more than a pair of loose trousers. He smelled like pain and moved like a man recovering from a fight. Eskel wanted to wrap him up in his arms and never let go. He scowled instead.

“This is yours,” Geralt said, thrusting Eskel’s medallion at him.

“And you want me to have it.”

Geralt snarled. “Yes.”

Eskel had lived without it for years; it was ridiculous to think he had to have it now. But Geralt had given it back to him twice now, had given Eskel back a piece of himself. And it was the only piece of Geralt he had to keep.

He took the medallion and put it over his head.

“The old man wanted you to have these,” Geralt said, holding out a short stack of books.

“Vesemir?” Eskel asked.

“Went back to Kaer Morhen, when I was looking for you.” Geralt stopped for a moment, the ghost of an expression flitting across his face too quick for Eskel to read. “Found these in his room, with your name on the note on top.”

“What did the note say?”

“I didn’t fucking read it, it’s addressed to you,” Geralt said. He turned and walked back up to the house without another word.

Eskel stuffed the books in his saddlebags and mounted up. He rode down the hill to the wide road beside river, then put his heels to his horse and galloped until Scorpion was frothy and blowing. By the time he fell out of the saddle at midday, he’d put half of Toussaint between himself and Geralt, with no clear destination in mind besides _somewhere else._

An investigation of his saddlebags revealed that someone had filled them with supplies. Cheese, grapes, and bread, but alchemy and armor repair kits as well.

He remounted and put the rest of Toussaint behind him before he stopped again that evening.

Geralt’s carefully prepared supplies were still there when he stopped. To distract himself before he tossed his saddlebags in the river to get rid of yet another confusing gesture from his best friend/ex-best friend/lover/ex-lover, he pulled out Vesemir’s books. The note slid out from between them when he began to examine the unmarked, leather-bound volumes.

Eskel broke the seal to reveal a short page in Vesemir’s spidery hand.

_Eskel –_

_I cannot apologize for doing what I thought was right to save you both. But I won’t let it steal your future either. The two of you have dug your way out of so much of the shit we piled on you. But I fear you need to know the truth of what was done to him if you are ever to be free of it._

_You must know: we did not break him. We thought we had, you showed us otherwise. First you, and then the bard, the sorceress, the lion cub. We did not break him. What we did was far worse._

_We convinced him he was broken._

_\- V_

“Cryptic much, you old bastard?” Eskel asked the note in his hand. The pain of reading his mentor’s handwriting, of remembering his voice, did not distract him from this morning’s pain so much as add to it.

Eskel thumbed a few pages of the first book. It was a journal with dated entries in Vesemir’s hand. The third volume had a scrap of parchment labelled ‘E’ marking a place. Eskel opened to that page and read.

_5.11_

_The mages have devised a new formula for enhanced mutagens. Mutations target emotionality, G and E recommended for treatment._

_5.23_

_Convinced Rennes we need only condition one of the boys to split them up. G selected, E has stronger signs and would be the greater loss. G told to prepare._

_5.24_

_Stunt with Quen in the courtyard proved our concern justified. G and E too closely bonded, unlikely to survive on the Path without intervention. The mages began treating G, A, R, and T this morning. G, A, and R survived to nightfall._

_5.25_

_G and R survive._

_5.30_

_G survives. Not sure for how long. Mutations partially successful. Mage’s intervention, completely so. G conditioned under magical duress to believe the mutations completely excised ability to feel, esp. feelings for E. Mage confident G’s mind will shut down any emotions the mutations have left him with. E sent to Ban Ard._

_7.15_

_E survives. Saving one was always better than losing them both._

Eskel sat down hard in the middle of the road.

Scorpion lipped at his hair.

“They tortured him into believing he couldn’t feel,” Eskel told his horse.

He reread the journal entries again, and then the note a third time.

“They made him believe he couldn’t feel anything for me,” he amended. Rage whited out his vision. He wanted to tear his instructors, the mages, everyone who’d ever hurt Geralt, limb from limb. Except the only one left to punish was Eskel himself. The pain he’d smelled on Geralt last night hadn’t just been emotional distress, it had been actual, bodily pain as Geralt fought whatever conditioning the mages had put on him, or whatever he’d put on himself to survive. And Eskel had left him to suffer through it alone.

Again.

Scorpion nosed his shoulder, hard, and began to amble down the road, headed back the way they’d come.

“Oh fuck. I have fucked this up,” Eskel said as he scrambled to his feet and ran after his horse. He mounted without slowing and kicked the stallion into another frantic gallop.

*

Geralt was not at Corvo Bianco by the time Eskel got back the next day.

“He has been called away on urgent duchy business,” his majordomo said, looking down his nose at Eskel.

Eskel swallowed a scream. “Will you tell me where?” he said in a tone that threatened violence.

“No, I will not.”

“Please,” Eskel said, taking the last of his patience in hand. “I have an urgent matter I must discuss with him.”

“Hmm,” B.B. said. He closed the door in Eskel’s face. 

Eskel raised his fist to slam it against the door but stopped at the sound of voices on the other side. Marlene was talking to B.B.

“I think we should tell Master Eskel,” she said.

“Why on earth would we do that?” B.B. asked her.

“Because the library, the goats, the empty shelves in his room. Melitele’s tears, the ridiculously large bathing tub!”

Eskel’s jaw went slack with surprise. That put a whole new spin on yesterday’s tour. Geralt hadn’t been showing Eskel his estate, he’d been showing Eskel his place in Geralt’s new life, a place Geralt had held open even though he thought Eskel was dead.

He’d been telling Eskel he cared the only way he could.

“…Hello? Oh good, he’s back with us.”

Blinking, Eskel realized the door to the house was open again, and B.B. and the cook were standing in front of him wearing identical expressions of mildly amused disapproval.

“I thought that was all for Yennefer,” he told them.

“The sorceress has very little interest in goats, sir.” B.B. said.

Eskel conceded the point with a wince.

“As I was saying,” B.B. said. “Master Geralt left yesterday to speak with Her Grace about some recent disappearances. He has not returned, but you might find out where he went if you attend the ball this evening.”

“A ball?” Eskel asked. “With like, nobles and dancing, and…and…little cheeses?”

“Yes, almost certainly.”

Eskel groaned. He touched the scars on his cheek, reminding himself why he didn’t go to fancy parties with fancy people who looked at him like he was a monster. 

But this was Geralt he might lose. Again.

B.B. had his arms crossed over his chest and was frowning at Eskel.

“Thank you,” Eskel said through gritted teeth. He mounted scorpion for what felt like the 700th time in the last two days. “I’ll ask the duchess and her court where he went. Then I will find him.”

“Wait,” Marlene said. She levelled a glare at the majordomo. “We know where he went.”

“Hmph. We haven’t been authorized to dispense that information,” B.B. argued. “And the witcher has not earned it.”

“Please,” Eskel said. “He’s my—” brother in arms, best friend, better half, family, lover, only reason for living “—Geralt. I can’t lose him again.”

B.B. heaved a very put-upon sigh. “Well I see no harm in telling you he left here at midday yesterday to look into a series of disappearances.”

Marlene rolled her eyes. “Down south, they’ve lost half a village over the last month. Ser Geralt thought maybe an asp or two failed to retreat with the rest of the night horde.”

“The what now?” Eskel asked. “And hang on, does that mean he’s been fighting higher vampires by himself out here?”

“He has had access to the full resources of the—”

“Yes, for some years,” Marlene interrupted B.B. “Why?”

“Because that’s practically suicide. Most witchers leave the vampires to control themselves, for good reason. They’re near impossible to kill, actually impossible for some of the higher classes.”

Marlene and B.B. exchanged worried, unsurprised looks.

“He did have more qualified help at one point,” B.B. said, folding his arms over his chest. “But no longer.”

Eskel scrubbed his face with both his hands. When he dropped them, Marlene had stepped closer, looking up at him with one hand on his stirrup.

“Do you love him?” she asked.

“I—” Eskel stopped, rubbing his hand over his chest. His fingers knocked into the silver of his medallion, the crystal on the back was body temperature warm when he folded his hand around it. “I think I might. I want a chance to find out.”

B.B. gave another exasperated sigh. “What can we provide for you?”

Eskel frowned. “Just like that?”

“Ser Geralt returned this place to life, made it thrive, gave our people livelihoods and more importantly, pride. He is a good man. I would see him safe. I would see him _happy_. What do you need of the estate?”

Taking a deep breath, Eskel pushed aside his turmoil and focused on his goal. “I need to know where he’s gone, and I wouldn’t turn down a fresh horse.”

Geralt wouldn’t be fool enough to attack an asp until daylight, if Eskel rode the night he just might reach Geralt in time.

He had to reach Geralt in time.


	15. Tap tap tap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eskel finds Geralt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Graphic, canon-typical blood and gore. Major injury.
> 
> We have reached the climax, though an epilogue will follow in the next few days. Stay tuned for a bit more resolution and some well-earned fluff.
> 
> I hope I have satisfied you romantics and justified your faith in me. Please know how very much I appreciate every comment. I’ve never been so pleased to be told to fuck off >:-D That’s exactly the reaction I was going for. So enjoy, you beautiful, angry people! 

Eskel pushed his borrowed horse to its limit. The charger, oh-so creatively named New Roach, wasn’t lightning fast but she kept up the punishing pace throughout the night and well past dawn.

It was midmorning by the time Eskel reached the crossroads beneath the ruined fortress where the asp had made its nest. Even from the bottom of the hill he could hear a violent confrontation taking place above, explosions and booming vampiric screams. Throwing himself off his horse, Eskel drew his blade and scrambled up the path.

He lurched through the gate with his sword already swinging. The asp attacking Geralt flitted away, gone invisible in the face of Eskel’s surprise attack.

Eskel scanned the battlefield, searching for the distortion that would give away her presence. The ground between the tumbled down stones was scraped and gouged; Geralt had been fighting this battle for hours by the look of it.

“Esk—” Geralt was bleeding black blood from his neck and a wound above his left eye.

“Wolf—”

“There’s—”

A quiver in the air to Eskel’s right resolved itself into the form of a naked, fanged woman. The scream she levelled at him would have been crippling had Geralt not shoved him out of the way. Eskel struck at the woman as he regained his balance, while Geralt twisted around to protect their backs, which didn’t make any sense unless…

Screaming behind him nearly knocked Eskel to his knees.

There were two asps.

Leaving Geralt to fight the asp behind them, Eskel charged forward. The asp feinted to the left, and Eskel cast Igni to drive her back into a corner of the ruin, opening several shallow cuts on her burn-blackened skin as she retreated. She huddled against a wall, eerily human in her movements if not her voice as she keened, wrapping her bloody arms around herself.

A triumphant scream behind him yanked Eskel’s attention away from his cowering enemy. He glanced over his shoulder.

The other asp had Geralt by the collar and was holding him against a wall, his heels scrabbling at the stone. He raised his hand to form a sign as she drew her clawed hand back.

Geralt met Eskel’s eyes. He tossed his casting hand towards Eskel, flicking a sparkle of golden light at him that hit his chest and expanded to wrap around his whole body, a blanket of warmth that smelled like Geralt, felt like his arms around Eskel.

The asp plunged her clawed hand through Geralt’s stomach, just below his sternum.

“No!” Eskel shouted, then jerked around at motion in the corner of his eye. The injured asp had taken advantage of his distraction; her claws were closing around Eskel’s throat.

The golden light around him exploded like a bomb going off. The asp attacking Eskel fell, her head, arms and shoulders blistering where they’d touched the shield.

Quen. Geralt had cast Quen on Eskel.

Eskel sliced off the asp’s head and ran to Geralt’s side, beheading the other stunned monster on his way.

“Hey Wolf, let me see,” he said as he reached the bloody heap of armor that was Geralt. Moving as carefully as he could, he straightened Geralt out on his back and pressed down hard on the gaping wound in his chest.

His hand could have easily fit through the hole below Geralt’s sternum.

“B.B. sent to the duchess for help,” Eskel told Geralt. “They’re coming, we’ll send them for a healer.”

Geralt choked. Black-tinted blood was pouring from his mouth, his eyes bulging as he struggled to breathe around the partially coagulated fluid.

Eskel scooped an arm around Geralt’s shoulders, pulling him upright and half into Eskel’s lap so he could lean sideways against Eskel’s chest. He cradled Geralt close and pressed their foreheads together.

“You’re going to be ok. We’re both going to be ok,” Eskel lied.

Geralt shook his head against Eskel. Eskel leaned back to study his face.

He looked older than Eskel. The silvery hair didn’t help, but really it was his face, lined in ways Eskel’s wasn’t, with ripples of sadness carved into the down-turned corners of his mouth, worry in the furrow between his brows, happy little crinkles around his eyes.

“Found me,” Geralt choked out.

“I promised I would,” Eskel said hollowly. He was too late, too late.

“Figured out. Jaskier’s riddle.”

“Shh. Don’t try to talk.”

“When—” Geralt’s back bowed, his head thrown back by the involuntary arch of his neck. “I do—You—”

“Shh, shh,” Eskel rocked them, appalled that Geralt was putting himself through more pain as he lay dying, for Eskel’s sake. “It’s ok. I know.”

“Have to say it.” He panted as his muscles slowly relaxed. The red-black puddle around them had grown while he writhed in Eskel’s arms. “You have to remember.”

“Remember?”

Geralt tapped his fingers three times on Eskel’s sternum. “You promised. Remember?”

_Tap tap tap._

Blood between them, Geralt comforting the monster in Eskel, believing he was still a good man. _I am sure._

_Tap tap tap._

A ghost in Eskel’s arms, returned from the dead and apologizing for getting killed. _I am sorry._

_Tap tap tap._

A familiar stranger who knew nothing of Eskel but trusted him anyway, begging him not leave. _Stay with me._

_Tap tap tap._

And a witcher trainee, red-haired and frantic, pressing promises into Eskel’s skin.

_Never doubt this, us. Me._

_Tap tap tap._

Geralt had been saying it their whole lives, tugging his sleeve and yanking on his stirrup and knocking knuckles on any part of Eskel he could reach, the cadence so familiar Eskel knew it in his bones. “I remember now. I do. I’m sorry I broke my promise, I’m sorry it took so long .”

“Hurt.”

Eskel was crying, his tears splashing on Geralt’s bloody face. “I couldn’t see that. I do now. I’m sorry.”

“’s ok…knew the mages…failed. Because I still—” _Tap tap tap._

Geralt had loved him all along.

“Jaskier’s riddle,” Eskel said. “When is a man more than a man?”

Geralt smiled at him, bloody and fond. He blinked, his golden eyes going empty and unseeing, his chest stuttering as his breathing stopped and started. Eskel pulled him closer.

“When they’re your everything,” Eskel whispered into Geralt’s hair.

Geralt tapped three times on Eskel’s chest, just below his medallion, the movement weak and faltering.

_Tap…tap……tap._

The heartbeat held in Eskel’s arms stopped.

Geralt’s hand dropped away from Eskel’s chest.

This was love. Whispering apologies by starlight, laughing at each other’s terrible puns, and teaming up against the world. Raising a daughter, building their scattered friends into a family, not flinching away from the worst in each other. Always reaching out to the other person’s best nature. The bubbling happiness in Eskel’s chest when they reunited. This yawning chasm of pain dropping through his guts.

This was love.

And Eskel had lost it.

Eskel rocked the body in his arms, his knees squelching in Geralt’s blood with the movement. Tears were streaming down his face as he cried, wrenching, wracking sobs that hurt as they tore out of his throat, hurt to match the knives sawing in Eskel’s stomach.

His future yawned before him, an empty road. He would not survive this loss. He would take to the Path again, work contracts, wander and fight as a witcher should. And he would die. Maybe tomorrow, maybe a decade from now, it didn’t matter. His life had already ended here, with Geralt’s empty body in his arms.

New pain joined the twisting of his belly, a burning, searing pain over his sternum.

Eskel opened his eyes and loosened his grip on Geralt enough to see his own chest. His medallion was glowing where it sat on top of his armor, a brilliant yellow-white light that burned its way steadily through his leather jerkin.

The protective pendant Geralt had melded to the back of his medallion all those years ago had come alive, the crystal glowing golden with concentrated chaos. 

“Don’t you dare, you stupid bastard,” Eskel said. He scrabbled at it, trying to pry it off. “Don’t you dare protect my life now that it’s not worth living.”

The pendant exploded.

* * *

Eskel woke on his back in a camp bed. His brain was stuffed with cotton, the taste of dwarven spirit and drowner brain thick on his tongue. Swallow, the witcher healing potion. Geralt must have given it to him to help him recover from the fight.

Except Geralt couldn’t have.

Geralt was dead.

Geralt had bled to death in Eskel’s arms.

Eskel’s body was made of pain. His stomach roiled, his bones buzzed, his joints throbbed, the skin of his chest itched and burned. The worst of it was focused on his right hand, his sword hand.

He opened his eyes to take stock of his injuries, to try and determine which were real and which were grief- induced.

His chest was bare, his medallion gone. Right in the middle of his sternum was a new mark, a coin- sized circle of smooth scar tissue surrounded by a starburst of deep seams. Eskel raised his hand to poke at it and discovered his right hand was bandaged from fingertips to mid-forearm, packed with burn salve and numbing herbs.

Twitching his fingers set the nerves in his whole right arm alight. Eskel fell from the bed and retched into the empty chamber pot beneath it. He heaved bile for an eternity, long past the point there was anything left to bring up, then collapsed back against the bed.

“Master Eskel, let me help.”

Eskel looked up to find a man standing above him, wearing the duchess’s colors and three parallel scars across his face that rivaled Eskel’s. He must be Damien, the backup B.B. had promised. He had arrived too late.

“Geralt?” Eskel asked.

“He’s gone,” Damien said.

Eskel knew that, he did. But hearing it confirmed made him shut his eyes against a new wave of crushing grief.

“Corvo Bianco will have more healing alchemy,” Damien added. He grunted as he heaved Eskel up by his armpits and dumped him on the edge of the bed.

“I can’t go back there without him,” Eskel said. He couldn’t go to Ciri either, nor to Jaskier or Yennefer. He couldn’t even go to Lambert. He couldn’t face any of them without Geralt, not when he’d failed so spectacularly to protect the man they loved. Geralt was the pin that held the shreds of Eskel’s life together. And Geralt was dead.

“You shouldn’t go anywhere at all, not now,” Damien said.

Eskel ignored him. He stood and shambled out of the tent, barefoot and clad in nothing but his bloodstained breeches.

The ducal guard had set up a small camp at the crossroads, half a dozen tents around a firepit. Eskel wandered through it unseeing towards the road.

“Stop him!” Damien shouted.

“I wouldn’t,” Eskel commented idly. His sword hand was ruined, but he still had his signs. He cast an absent- minded Quen and continued through the camp. The first guard who tried to stop him flew back a dozen paces. No one else tried.

He didn’t know how long he’d been meandering down the road when he lost interest in movement and sat on the low rock wall to stare blankly at his dusty feet.

Geralt was gone. Geralt would never come home to Eskel again, he’d never bury himself in Geralt’s body again, never get to hold him as they shook with the aftershocks. He’d never get to treat him with the tenderness he deserved. He’d never get a chance to tell Geralt he loved him back.

He’d never hear Geralt’s voice again.

“What the fuck?” someone who sounded a lot like Geralt said. But Geralt was dead. For sure this time. Eskel had held him as the life drained out of his eyes.

“Eskel. Hey.” A pair of boots and breeches appeared in Eskel’s eyeline. “Esk. Look at me, you horse’s ass.”

Eskel looked up.

Geralt was standing in front of him, too haggard and disarrayed to be a figment of Eskel’s fracturing mind. His armor was missing, but he at least had on a shirt and boots.

“You were gone,” Eskel told him.

“To Corvo Bianco, for more supplies. Between the two of us, we’ve burned through all my Swallows. And pretty much everything else.”

“No. You died. Again.”

“…yeah. Sorta looks that way.” Geralt lifted his undershirt to reveal a fist-sized scar just below his sternum before collapsing next to Eskel’s feet. “The medallion brought me back, I think. There was this blinding light. And you. So I came back. Woke up with a new scar feeling like I’d recently bled to death.”

“Only you would know what that feels like.” Eskel summoned a weak glare for him. “You should have cast Quen on yourself, protected yourself.”

“I protected you,” Geralt said with shrug, as if that were the same thing. “I—I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

“Not for saving you, I can’t be sorry for that. I’m sorry for—” he touched the back of Eskel’s bandaged hand with gentle fingers “—it wasn’t supposed to maim you to save me, it was supposed to protect your life.”

“It did. It protected you.”

“That’s healthy.”

“You started it, with the Quen throwing.”

“You started the Quen throwing a century ago.” Geralt shrugged again, still unrepentant.

Eskel reached hesitantly for Geralt’s face with his unbandaged hand, needing to feel Geralt’s skin warm and alive beneath his fingers but dreading the inevitable flinch.

Geralt caught Eskel’s wrist, pulling his hand close and nestling into it. He rested one arm across Eskel’s knees, leaning his side against Eskel’s legs and propping up his chin with his hand. His eyes drifted shut and his chest vibrated with a low rumble of contentment.

“You flinched back from me, before,” Eskel said in a hushed voice as he brushed his thumb across Geralt’s cheek.

“Didn’t know what you wanted. Can’t be what you want.”

“You already are.” Eskel tapped his index finger against Geralt’s temple three times. _Tap tap tap._

Geralt’s eyes popped open, the naked hope on his face making Eskel’s stomach swoop.

“Gods, aren’t we a pair?” Eskel asked with a giddy half-smile.

“No. We aren’t.” Geralt’s eyes were very round as he looked up at Eskel. “You said you don’t want me. You said I’m not enough.”

“That’s not what I meant. I want more of you, all of you.” He leaned down to kiss the tip of Geralt’s nose, one sharp cheekbone, the scar through his eyebrow. “I want this. I thought you didn’t. You never ask for more of me.”

“I did, once,” Geralt said. His fingers came up to touch the scar in the center of Eskel’s chest, and he remembered, remembered the night Geralt had given him the amulet all those years ago. Eskel had turned him away.

Wincing, Eskel pressed a lingering kiss to Geralt’s forehead.

“I’m sorry,” Eskel said again, because Geralt deserved to hear it when he wasn’t bleeding to death. “I was grieving, and I didn’t understand. I didn’t want to remember.”

“Forgiven. A long time ago.” Geralt wobbled his head back and forth uncertainly. “Will it poison us, the sorrow?”

“No, I won’t let it anymore.” He'd let his guilt and grief keep them apart too long.

Geralt quirked a disbelieving eyebrow at him. “Sure?”

“Yes. I’m sure. I remember now. This. Us. You.” He punctuated each statement with another kiss to Geralt’s face.

“I can’t—” Geralt said even as he leaned into Eskel’s touch.

“And yet, you do?” Eskel raised his eyebrows in a question and tapped his index finger three times on the hinge of Geralt’s jaw. 

_Tap tap tap._

A shudder ran through the other man. His mouth worked soundlessly, his face twisting with frustration, but he managed a sharp nod. Then another, and another.

“I do too.” Eskel sank his fingers into Geralt’s silky hair, cradling the side of his head. One of Geralt’s hands wrapped around Eskel’s wrist, his index finger ticking three times against Eskel’s pulse point.

_Tap tap tap._

_I love you._


	16. Epilogue - Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geralt and Eskel begin the rest of their lives together. There's one last hurdle to overcome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Gentle, fairly well negotiated, consensual sex with dom/sub undertones. A lot of fluff and cuddling. 
> 
> So, we have reached the end. This has been an epic journey, thank you for joining me on it. I was surprised, flattered, and overjoyed by the reaction to this fic. I never expected anyone to read it, much less stick with it for 45k words of a century-long slow burn. But this pair is my Witcher otp so I thought I'd share, and you folks have been kind enough to share how much you've love/hated it :-D So thank you again for your support. It means the world. Be well, my friends.

Eskel came to Geralt drowsy and content, a broad smile lighting up his face. Geralt was sitting cross-legged beside the empty fire-pit on the hill above Corvo Bianco, not meditating so much as contemplating the gold-tinted scene before him and his place in it.

“Sleep and eat, eat and sleep. That’s all I do,” Eskel said as he collapsed beside Geralt in the grass.

“Retired,” Geralt reminded him. “Barrel guy didn’t show?’

“‘Cooper’, and no, he didn’t.”

“Damn.”

“Not that broken up about it, honestly,” Eskel said around a yawn. He shut his eyes and was drowsing within minutes.

Geralt did not join him. He’d come up here when Eskel was supposed to be busy for a reason. Eskel wouldn’t approve of what Geralt was about to try.

The door was still there in the corner of his mind, making it impossible for Geralt to care about Eskel. The first day they were recovered enough to experiment, they spent several hours mapping Geralt’s limitations. He could almost admit to doing what he couldn’t do if the statement was broad enough, he had no trouble expressing the affection he didn’t have physically, and he had an alarming ability to behave in exactly the way he knew he couldn’t feel. It was fucking confusing. And painful, like feeling around for the edges of a bloody wound in the dark. It left Geralt shaky and frustrated, and Eskel equal parts angry and fondly amused.

“You do, though. Right?” he had said in answer to Geralt’s glare, tapping his forehead three times.

“Yes,” Geralt had spat out. Indirect questions were halfway bearable.

The rest of it wasn’t. Eskel wanted all of Geralt, deserved to have the best of Geralt.

Geralt had to open the door. Even if it was safer to keep it shut.

“Esk?” he asked experimentally.

“Shh,” Eskel responded. When Geralt poked his side, he batted away Geralt’s hand and started to snore.

When another poke to Eskel failed to wake him, Geralt shrugged and sank deep into meditation, turning his gaze inward.

The door was right where he’d left it, though his mental image of it had shifted over the years. It had gone from a small, secret place barricaded shut by every possible means to something like Kaer Morhen’s latticed ironwork gate, heavy, indestructible, and at least partially porous.

Geralt wrapped both mental hands around the latticework, ignoring the spike of pain that shot through his body, and lifted.

He was ready for the agony of it this time. He was dimly aware of his arching back slamming his head against the ground, but he ignored it, ignored when his hands began to bubble and bleed, ignored the hiss of flesh burning away. He lifted with every ounce of mental strength he’d built over a century of living behind a mask of iron-willed control.

The gate lifted a few inches, and then a few inches more.

“Geralt!’’ Eskel was calling his name, his actual name, Geralt could hear him now. He just had to apply a little more strength and he’d be through to him at last.

“Geralt please, please wake up.”

Eskel’s voice wasn’t coming from the other side of gate, Geralt realized, faltering. It was coming from behind him, outside him. But he almost had it, just a bit longer and—

“Come on Geralt, please. Snap out of it.” It sounded like Eskel was crying.

Geralt dropped the gate. As the echoes of it booming shut reverberated through his mind, he fled back to consciousness.

He opened his eyes. Eskel’s frantic face was all he could see, the edges of his vision wavering.

“Dizzy,” he told Eskel.

“No shit. You weren’t breathing! What the fuck?” Eskel’s hand was in Geralt’s hair, petting, soothing.

“What the mages did to my mind. Trying to break it.”

“Of course you are. Brilliant plan. Just sit down and undo a century-old magical tripwire tied to your nerve endings.”

Geralt scowled at him, the expression collapsing when another tear snaked down Eskel’s face, catching on his scars.

“Sorry,” he said, brushing away the tear.

Eskel let his breath out with a huff and collapsed onto Geralt’s chest, pillowing his head just above his heart. Geralt wrapped one arm across Eskel’s shoulders. He tangled the fingers of his free hand in Eskel’s, carefully massaging the shiny skin of his newly formed scars.

“Yennefer offered to break open my mind,” Geralt said.

“I hope you told her where to shove that offer.”

Geralt snorted. “She meant well. Still stops by sometimes. I could ask her to, to—”

“Cause you pain so I can have my ego stroked? If you want to do this for you, break this conditioning for your own peace of mind, fine. But don’t do it for me. I don’t need the words, Geralt.”

Geralt froze. He’d thought he imagined it. “You—you never call me that.”

Eskel blinked, his eyelashes brushing Geralt’s shirt. “What?”

“My name. You never call me by my name.”

“Of course I do.” Eskel frowned in thought. “Don’t I?”

“No. Not since before.” It was one of the many ways Geralt had known he’d been lost to Eskel forever.

Eskel winced. “Do you—do you want me to stop calling you Wolf?”

Geralt tipped his chin down to meet Eskel’s eyes. “No. It’s part of who I am, your Wolf. I don’t know how to be your Geralt. That’s what I’m trying to fix. You deserve all of me.”

“Oh for fucks sake.” Eskel sat up and kissed Geralt deeply before breaking off to scowl at him. “You are determined to misunderstand me, Geralt. I want to be your best friend and your lover and your family, but I don’t need to possess every corner of your mind. Geralt.”

“Well. When you put it that way.”

Eskel snorted. He rolled them, so that Geralt was stretched out on Eskel’s chest. “You are my Geralt, my Wolf, my everything. Just the way you are.”

It was suddenly impossible for Geralt to speak around the lump in his throat.

“And you are a stubborn ass.” Eske’s knuckles tapped three times on Geralt’s spine as they settled. _Tap tap tap_. “Now go the fuck to sleep, I’ve got an hour before I have to charm a noblewoman into serving our wine at her exclusive tasting.”

“…a sentence I never imagined you saying.”

“Add it to the list.”

Geralt’s rubbed his cheek against Eskel’s shirt. He tapped his knuckles three times on Eskel’s sternum, just above the star-shaped scar left by the medallion, before he drifted into an exhausted sleep.

* * *

Geralt found Eskel hiding in the bedroom, ostensibly for a mid-afternoon nap. When Eskel cracked one wary eyelid, Geralt waved the jar of salve in his hand threateningly. Eskel’s burned skin benefitted from twice daily treatment to keep the skin supple, but so far only Geralt bothered to apply it.

“Again?” Eskel asked with just a bit of a whine in his voice. “I’m comfortable.”

“Up. Shirt off.” Geralt sank to a cross-legged seat on the bed and opened the salve.

Eskel pushed himself up. “Bossy today.”

“Bossy every day.”

“Not in my experience.” Eskel lifted the hem of his shirt slowly, dragging it up and over his head with an exaggerated roll of his upper body.

Geralt huffed, taking Eskel’s burned hand and beginning to massage the oily salve into it. He worked slowly, moving his thumbs in circles around Eskel’s palm, then fisting his hand around each finger and stroking before working his way across Eskel’s knuckles and up to his wrist.

Eskel shifted in his seat and Geralt cocked an eyebrow at him innocently. But when Geralt scooped out another handful of salve and moved closer to Eskel, he couldn’t hide that he was just as affected by the undeniably sensual act of oiling another man’s fingers. He ignored the heat in his groin and began to work the salve into the star-shaped scar in the center of Eskel’s chest.

Between the lingering exhaustion from bringing someone back from the dead/being dead and the joy of their newfound casual intimacy, neither Eskel nor Geralt had pushed for anything more sexual than a bit of kissing before bed.

It definitely wasn’t because their last attempt had ended so catastrophically.

But Geralt wanted. In a non-specific way he didn’t think too hard about.

Eskel was looking at Geralt like he was simultaneously ravenous for him and terrified he might explode at any moment. Which wasn’t really fair. Eskel had been the one who suddenly changed all the rules by which they had sex. Geralt had never been allowed to look or talk or touch, but somehow following Eskel’s rules last time had only made him leave.

So yeah, not going to do that again.

And given that Eskel’s trousers were noticeably tented and he still hadn’t moved past staring at Geralt with that unhappy little twist in his lips, Geralt was going to have to be the adult.

“Can I?” Geralt asked, raising his ointment covered fingers to Eskel’s cheek.

“I—do you want to?”

Geralt gave him a dirty look that probably showed a few too many teeth. Fucking mages and their fucking mental blocks.

“Right, sorry. Worst possible question.”

“Trust me to do what I want, stop me if I do something you don’t want?” Geralt asked.

Eskel raised his hand to Geralt’s shirt, brushing it aside to reveal the knot of scar tissue his teeth had left just above Geralt’s collarbone.

“You expect me to believe you wanted this mark?”

Geralt touched the scar in the middle of Eskel’s chest. “You’re marked too—” he laced his fingers with Eskel’s damaged hand “—worse than me. Do you mind?”

“That’s different. These marks saved you.”

“Hmm.” Geralt raised an eyebrow at him.

Eskel rubbed at his scars. “Yeah yeah, fair enough.”

“I told you to stop last time.”

Eskel’s gaze dropped to bedspread between them, his shoulders slumping. Geralt tipped his face back up with a featherlight touch on his chin.

“And you stopped. When I asked you to, you stopped.”

Understanding tempered the guilt on Eskel’s face. “Maybe we’re not as bad at this as I thought.”

Geralt snorted. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to Eskel’s snarled lip, nibbling gently on the wounded flesh. Eskel shuddered, his cheek heating in a blush Geralt could feel against his lips.

“Please,” Geralt said, running his salve-covered fingers down Eskel’s scars, starting at his hairline and tracing each seam lightly to where they ended just beneath his chin. “Trust me.”

“With anything, with everything. Show me what you want.”

Geralt smiled. “Hands,” he ordered.

Eyebrows jumping up in confusion, Eskel held out his hands, palm up. Geralt put one of his wrists in each and grinned when Eskel’s hands closed automatically around them. He sprawled out on his back, pulling Eskel with him and throwing his hands above his head, so Eskel was forced to catch his weight on Geralt’s wrists with his body pinning Geralt to the bed.

“You like this,” Eskel said, settling a little harder on Geralt.

Geralt nodded. “Feel like a person under you. Feel safe.”

Eskel met Geralt’s eyes. “You are person. And safe. I’ve got you.”

Geralt swallowed hard and did not think about how warm that made him feel, how tight his chest had gotten. He tried to buck their clothed groins together, but Eskel pinned him in place with his hips.

Letting go of Geralt’s wrists, and chuckling at his wordless growl of complaint, Eskel stripped off Geralt’s shirt, trousers, and smalls.

Geralt bit his lip and tried not to fidget as Eskel studied his body one inch at a time, his gaze crawling from Geralt’s face to his bare cock.

“Beautiful.” Eskel put a hand on the soft skin where Gerat’s hip joined his thigh.

Stretching out his hand, Geralt could just reach Eskel’s marred cheek with his fingertips. “Yes.”

Eskel tipped his face into the touch, then his eyes narrowed. He caught both of Geralt’s wrists again, shoving them beneath his body and holding them in place at the small of Geralt’s back with one massive hand. As holds went, it was a bit awkward, but it arched Geralt’s body in a way that made him feel even more deliciously exposed.

Licking his lips, Eskel and pressed his oily, scarred fingers into the mark on Geralt’s shoulder, giving him a wobbly smile that turned filthy when Geralt leaned into it. He slid his hand down, stopping to circle one of Geralt’s nipples a few times before pinching it between his blunt nails.

“Esk.” Geralt twitched against the pleasure/pain of Eskel’s fingers.

“Good?”

Geralt nodded, biting his lip. “Allowed to talk?”

“Someday I might gag you so you can’t even whine while I take you apart, but today I want to hear you.” The smile he tacked onto the end of that statement was far too sweet for the threat it contained. “You’re ok, it’s safe. No one left to hide from.”

Geralt nodded, fighting the lump in his throat.

Eskel’s hand moved across Geralt’s chest to his other nipple, circling, pressing, tweaking.

Geralt’s cock jumped on his belly. He pulled on Eskel’s hands as he bowed again, the anchor of Eskel’s grip holding him securely as he writhed.

“So sensitive,” Eskel said, dragging his nails down Geralt’s chest and belly.

Geralt panted, looking down the planes of his own body to watch as Eskel circled Geralt’s cock with his oily hand, teasing his silvery hair, ghosting over the crease of his thigh, but never putting his hand where Geralt desperately wanted it.

“Thoughts?” Eskel asked. “Gotten pretty quiet.”

“Fuck you,” Geralt bit out.

Eskel chuckled. “Maybe later.”

That got Geralt’s attention. He squinted at Eskel. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I think I might like it, with you. You’re...safe. Home.”

The insufferable warmth in Geralt’s chest he dared not name was nearly choking him now. “Kiss me?”

“‘Kay.” Eskel dropped to his elbows, swallowing Geralt to the root with no warning.

“Not what I meant,” Geralt gasped out as the edges of his vision went fuzzy. He gave a little complaining tug to the hand Eskel still had wrapped around his wrists. “Esk, slow down, gonna—”

Eskel withdrew his mouth. “No. Wait for me.’’

“Hngh. Already been waiting a century.” Geralt thumped his head on the pillow in frustration.

“What’s a few minutes more?” He breathed out on Geralt’s spit-damp skin, nestling his face into Geralt’s hip to watch his groin as he squirmed.

“You—you’re still fucking dressed!”

“Yeah, but you like that too, don’t you?”

Geralt didn’t respond, but that was answer enough for Eskel, who grinned triumphantly.

“Hold this, want to see you,” Eskel said, hooking his hand under one of Geralt’s knees and lifting, pushing his thigh back until it was folded up against his chest. Geralt wrapped one arm around it, curling in on himself so he was on display for Eskel.

Eskel pillowed his head on Geralt’s other thigh, the pupils of his eyes so wide they had swallowed the gold as he watched his oily finger enter Geralt’s body.

Geralt shut his eyes and concentrated on controlling himself.

“Look at me,” Eskel ordered, tugging on the wrist he still held.

Shaking, Geralt forced his eyes open and glared at Eskel. “Can’t. Have to wait for you.”

“So responsive.” Eskel kissed the crest of Geralt’s hip and added another finger. He scissored them, opening Geralt more slowly than he’d ever done before, his rapt attention on every one of Geralt’s little reactions making that crushing feeling in Geralt’s ribcage intensify until he could barely breathe.

“Esk—”

Eskel pulled out his fingers, kissing his way up Geralt’s body to his mouth. A little worry line had appeared between his brows. “Ok?”

Fucking mages.

“Think so?” Geralt said.

Eskel tapped on his chest three times. _Tap tap tap._ “Never have gotten the hang of inflection, have you?”

“Shut up. I’m ok.” He wrapped his legs around Eskel’s waist and used his heels to drag him closer. “Come on.”

“You stop breathing again, and I’ll kill you,” Eskel said as he pulled himself out and lined up. He kissed the tip of Geralt’s nose.

Geralt snorted, then sucked in a breath as Eskel breached him. Eskel froze.

“Stop moving and I’ll kill _you_ ,” Geralt said, clawing at Eskel’s back.

Eskel snorted, then sucked in a breath as Geralt pulled him closer. He began to roll his hips, pulling out and thrusting into Geralt slowly, the stretch of it achingly pleasant after the excruciatingly thorough preparation.

“You’re made for this, you know,” Eskel said. “They thought they made you to fight, to kill. But this is who you really are, this soft, breakable person.”

Geralt shook his head. He bared his teeth to remind Eskel what he really was, how easy it would be for him to break free, to break Eskel.

“Shh.” Eskel scooped both arms around Geralt, sitting up and dragging him down into his lap. Geralt made an incoherent sound of mingled pleasure and discomfort at the deepness of the new angle. Eskel caught Geralt’s wrists behind his back with one hand again, pulling them down to arch Geralt’s chest into his waiting mouth.

“You were made this. For being loved, for loving.” Eskel lathed his tongue over Geralt’s nipples, kissed the scars on his shoulder, mouthed at the pulse point in his neck. His hips rolled in a steady rhythm, implacable as the tides.

“Can’t.” Geralt twitched, trying to kneel up on his knees to reduce the sensations overwhelming his body, but Eskel tugged his thigh away, spreading him wider.

“I’ve got you, you’re ok.”

Geralt dropped his cheek to the top of Eskel’s head and whined into his sweaty hair. 

“It’s alright, come for me, Geralt.” Eskel leaned his forehead to Geralt’s shoulder, his breath stuttering as he neared his own completion. His hand slid between them to wrap around Geralt’s cock. “I’m with you, it’s ok. I’m with you. Let go.”

Geralt’s chest felt like it might burst with the bubbling beneath his breastbone, the warmth filling up his lungs.

Eskel was with him, home at last.

They were safe.

The realization hit at the same time as his release, as bodily and tangible as his muscles clamping down on Eskel, as his back arcing in pleasure.

They were safe.

He could let go.

Pain bloomed from the base of his skull, crawling across his skin in pulsing electric waves, amplified and confused by the sparkling pleasure of his orgasm, a terrifying mix of burning nerve endings and shuddering ecstasy that Geralt could only surrender to, relaxing fully into Eskel’s waiting arms.

And then it was over. Geralt was limp in Eskel’s lap, draped halfway over his shoulder.

“Geralt?” _Tap tap tap_ on his spine. “You with me?”

“Mmphf,” Geralt said weakly.

Eskel laid him on the bed with shaking hands, soothing the sweaty hair back from his face in a gesture that made Geralt’s heart swell with affection.

“What happened? You don’t look so good. I was—I really tried—”

“Were great,” Geralt said, patting Eskel’s scarred cheek with an uncoordinated hand and nearly poking him in the eye. “Magical.”

“You’re scaring me again. You live to scare me.”

“Eh. ‘m fine.” It made Geralt feel loved when Eskel worried, but he didn’t want Eskel to suffer.

Because he loved Eskel.

He loved Eskel?

Taking a few deep, meditative breaths, Geralt turned his gaze inward. His inner self was littered with the detritus of a great upheaval, the door not just open but reduced to sharp-angled rubble.

The door was gone.

“Ok, you’re _really_ scaring me,” Eskel said, knuckling Geralt’s sternum.

Batting Eskel’s hand away, Geralt grinned stupidly at the oldest love of his long life. “The door.”

“The fucking door. Geralt you idiot, I thought we agreed you weren’t going to mess with the godsdamn pit trap in your brain.”

“Wasn’t. Anyway, gone now.”

“Like hell you weren’t, you—what?”

“Went away. Don’t need it anymore.”

“Of course you don’t, why would you ever have needed it?”

Geralt ran his fingers down Eskel’s scars, memorizing the feel of the raised tissue.

“To protect me,” Eskel realized aloud for both of them.

It was easier to remember now. Maybe Vesemir’s orders to save Eskel by not loving him had been locked away along with Geralt’s love, his want, his care, hidden by his mind to protect them both and then booby trapped by the mage’s manipulation. But Geralt wasn’t going to dwell on the memory.

“Real kiss?” Geralt asked.

Eskel let out a shaky breath, then leaned down to kiss him, a chaste press of his lips. When he broke it, he collapsed next to Geralt on his side.

"Skin," Geralt demanded, tugging at the hem of Eskel's shirt.

Eskel let out a shaky laugh and stripped bare, turning to face Geralt again.

“This, us. You. We’re safe,” Eskel said, tapping three times on Geralt's shoulder.

Geralt rolled towards him, scooping one arm under his waist and throwing the other over his back, ratcheting them together and tangling their legs. Eskel embraced him back, pulling them chest to chest and pressing his forehead to Geralt’s, until he couldn’t tell who was holding who. Geralt tapped three times on the nape of Eskel's neck. 

“We are safe,” Geralt breathed against Eskel’s lips like a prayer.

_Tap tap tap._

* * *

“So. This is love, is it?”

Geralt looked up from his work and was startled into a laugh, a loud guffaw that echoed across the vineyard and made the field hands look up and grin.

“Shut up, you look just as ridiculous,” Eskel said, self-consciously touching the wooden clothespin pinching his nostrils shut.

It was late spring, and late spring meant waking up to poultry dropping fertilizer left on the doorstep like a gift basket from hell. Geralt had scented the merchant coming and slipped out to help, leaving Eskel asleep in their bed with a clothespin on the side table.

“Imbossible,” Geralt responded nasally. “’m a fuckin’ knight.”

Eskel rolled his eyes and picked up a spare shovel, bending to help Geralt incorporate fertilizer into the vines on the other side of the row.

“You could stay inside.” Geralt shot a quick look at Eskel’s gloved hand. He could use it without significant pain, but he mostly let the locals assume it was a career-ending injury. Unless Geralt needed help with a hunt. Or Eskel wanted to spar to burn off energy. Or if the overwhelming smell of chicken shit needed to mitigated as soon as possible.

“Can smell it from inside,” Eskel said with shudder.

Geralt grunted in agreement and bent to his task, the two of them falling into an easy rhythm as they moved down the row after row of vines. They worked through the day, not bothering to the stop for lunch as they methodically churned through bags of fertilizer. When they reached the end of yet another row, Geralt looked up to find it was the last.

Straightening, Geralt shook out his stiff knee. He watched Eskel knuckle at his lower back with a grimace, his scarred, dirt-smeared face glowing in the setting sun. Geralt wanted to kiss him, so he did, swallowing Eskel’s surprised grunt.

He tasted a little like chicken shit.

“Yup, this is love,” Geralt said, tapping three times on the nape of Eskel’s neck as he let go.

“The two of us, smelling like shit at the end of a long day of backbreaking labor…?”

“Nothing new, really.”

Eskel laughed. “’Suppose not. ‘Cept we get drunk off the end product, eventually.”

“Also not new.”

“Speak for yourself. I didn’t always drink away my earnings.” Eskel shifted from foot to foot, his broad face uncharacteristically pensive. 

“You were expecting something else, from lo—love?” Geralt asked, only tripping over the L-word a little.

“No, no.” Eskel crossed his arms over his chest.

“Liar.”

Eskel waved a dismissive hand. “I guess I thought it would be more like the stories. You know, fair maidens swooning at my feet, true love conquering fate itself. That kind of thing.”

“I am fair and not above swooning,” Geralt threatened, wiping sweat from his brow.

“Please don’t. I know I’m pretty great, but you’re covered in the devil’s offal.”

“Hey, this is expensive shit.”

Eskel groaned at the pun. “You are the worst. The literal worst. Anyway, this is just so…normal. This is just us.”

“You were expecting something exceptional. Maybe something that could bring a feral creature back to humanity.”

“You’re not—” 

“Not just me.” Geralt touched his shoulder, where Eskel’s teeth had marked his skin.

Eskel’s breath hitched, but he didn’t apologize again, thank the gods. “Fair point. I just thought love would be more, more magical.”

“Like, break a magical mental barrier, that kind of magical.”

“I still say that was my magic dick.” Eskel said raising his eyebrows suggestively.

“Still ignoring that. Maybe you thought love would be constant and unflinching, evergreen.” 

“Yeah, exactly!” Eskel pointed at Geralt, nodding.

“Something that could endure a century of missed opportunities and painful misunderstandings.”

Eskel blushed. “Right, well. Uh.”

“And true love conquers fate itself, right?”

“Okay, I get it—”

“The sort of world disrupting force that could literally bring someone back from the dead?” Geralt poked Eskel in the chest hard, right above the mark the medallion had left. “But this is just us. Not at all like the old stories.’’

“Fine, fine. You win. We’ve got ourselves an epic love story after all. Usually the fair maiden isn’t also the knight, but you know, I can work with it.”

“Good.” Geralt swiped at the mix of dirt and fertilizer on his shirt, then waved vaguely around them. “But yeah mostly, it is this. Giant centipede infested fields, vendors who show up three weeks too late…” 

“The cart of chicken shit pushed to the very edge of the property?”

“That too.”

“Well. If this is love,” Eskel said, tugging Geralt into his arms despite the grime covering them from head to toe and dropping his chin onto Geralt’s shoulder, “I can’t fucking wait.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Let me know if I need to add or adjust tags. Comments feed the beast and are always welcome!


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